LEADING JOURNALISTS COMMENT.

The well-known journalist Aleksandr Minkin poured scorn on Yeltsin’s remark last week, in which the president said that democrats would vote for him as president since "they don’t have any other choice." The remark, Minkin fumed, made it "quite clear that president doesn’t consider and hasn’t ever considered himself a democrat." (7) Writing in Nezavisimaya gazeta, chief editor Vitaly Tretyakov predicted that the revival of the USSR will be the central issue of the presidential race. The Communists won December’s general elections, Tretyakov suggested, because "they were not ashamed to admit their devotion to the land of Soviets" or to campaign for the restoration of the Soviet Union. (8)

Fear of Retribution Said Prompting Plots to Postpone Elections.