PRESIDENTIAL AIDE SEES OLD POLITICAL ELITE TRANSFORMING ITSELFINTO NEW ONE.

Yeltsin aide Georgi Satarov told the July 15Segodnya that the "union of the old and new politicalelites already exists. Who do you think Chernomyrdin is? Or Yeltsin,for that matter? True, the word ‘union’ is a bit of a misnomer;things go much deeper. The fact is that it is precisely the representativesof the old nomenklatura who are among those most interested incapitalism." He suggested that the Communist Party todayconsists of "those who were unlucky, who did not realizein good time what had happened, and who did not rush to seizecontrol of this new property in order to manage it under the newconditions." In other comments, Satarov suggested that Yeltsinprobably did envy Chernomyrdin’s recent political successes, thatthe likely outcome in the upcoming elections would be a combined35-40 percent vote for the center-right and center-left coalitions,and that the "probability exists" that a "right-wingdictatorship" could come to power in Russia, in part because"totalitarianism cannot be overcome at one fell swoop, bysome administrative measures–identify, punish, isolate–if thistotalitarianism exists in each of us."