ZYUGANOV OVERWHELMING FAVORITE OF RUSSIAN CITIZENS RESIDENT IN BALTIC STATES.

Russia’s Communist party leader and presidential candidate Gennady Zyuganov won 62.7 percent of the votes of Russian citizens residing in Estonia, 64.5 percent in Latvia, and an as yet unspecified "absolute majority" in Lithuania. President Boris Yeltsin ran a distant second with 14.7 percent in Latvia and 17 percent in Lithuania. Yeltsin ran third in Estonia with 11.4 percent, finishing behind retired General Aleksandr Lebed, who placed second with 15.1 percent. Russian embassy staff in Lithuania explained Zyuganov’s success as resulting from "nostalgia for the former way of life" experienced by Russian voters in the Baltic states. Latvian president Guntis Ulmanis commented that the results "show that these people want to go back to the former Soviet empire," and Foreign Minister Valdis Birkavs said that their preference was not surprising since "most Soviet-era settlers are reliable Communists." The turnout of Russian citizens eligible to vote in Russian elections was 27 percent of nearly 100,000 in Estonia, and 30 percent of 15,000 in Lithuania. (BNS, June 17)

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