YELTSIN HITS THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL.

President Boris Yeltsin visited Belgorod Oblast in southwest Russia yesterday, campaigning hard for reelection. "The hardest period of the reforms is already over," he declared, and Russia can now afford to launch "an active social policy." Raising living standards is now the issue at the top of the agenda, he said. Yeltsin produced something for everyone, promising the elderly that their pensions would increase, students that they would get higher stipends, and investors that all those who lost their savings because of inflation since the economic reforms began would be compensated in full. (BBC World Service, April 4) Yeltsin is due to return to Moscow this evening; his next trip will be to the southern Russian regions of Stavropol and Krasnodar.

Yakunin Defends Estonian Cobelievers.