POPULAR SKEPTICISM OVER ELECTION.

Opinion polls published over the weekend found Zyuganov still in the lead with Yeltsin in second place. In a poll conducted April 4-10, the VTsIOM Russian Center for Public Opinion Research found that Zyuganov’s support had risen to 26 percent, up one percentage point from two weeks earlier, while Yeltsin’s support was unchanged at 18 percent. (NTV, April 13; Reuter, April 14) But VTsIOM also found the public’s expectations of the final result to be quite different from their voting intentions, with 40 percent predicting a Yeltsin victory and 23 percent predicting that Zyuganov would win. NTV suggested an explanation for the discrepancy by following its report on the poll by an interview with Grigory Yavlinsky, who hinted heavily that he and other members of the Russian population expect the elections to be rigged in Yeltsin’s favor by local leaders. Zyuganov, for his part, has complained bitterly that both opinion polls and the mass media are politically biased in Yeltsin’s favor.

Defense Ministry Rebuffs Communists.