Yeltsin and his administration did nothing to impede the registration of other candidates but did try hard to persuade several of them to drop out in his favor or at a minimum not to come together into a potential “third force” in the campaign. The priorities were Lebed, whose curt, masculine deportment was selling well,61 and Yavlinskii. Since Yeltsin knew from polls that Lebed would draw first-round votes away from Zyuganov, the objective was to gain his cooperation in the two-candidate runoff, Zyuganov against Yeltsin, that was expected to follow. Lebed initiated the contact secretly and met in April with Aleksandr Korzhakov. Korzhakov offered him command of Russian airborne forces, saying he did not know enough about the economy to succeed in politics, and Lebed declined, with the statement, “I know my price.”62 Lebed called on Yeltsin in the Kremlin on May 2 and the negotiations restarted. Within several weeks, the general agreed to throw his support to the president in the second round; he would get an infusion of campaign funds in the first round and appointment as minister of defense after it.63 Aleksandr Oslon’s research showed Yavlinskii as competing for votes with Yeltsin, not Zyuganov, and suggested that his supporters would migrate naturally to Yeltsin in the second round, so it was desirable to knock him out of round one. Negotiations through intermediaries began in January, and Yavlinskii met with Yeltsin on May 5 and 16. The older man “entreated, browbeat, pressured, and buttered up” the younger to throw in the towel and accept the position of first deputy premier; Yavlinskii demanded the dismissal of Chernomyrdin and other points Yeltsin found unacceptable. “I would not have withdrawn, either,” Yeltsin told him as he showed him to the door in Building No. 1 on May 16.64
Bare-knuckle tactics were deployed in other areas, too. Chernomyrdin assigned a deputy premier, Yurii Yarov, to work daily with the campaign staff and see to it that the federal bureaucracy used “administrative levers” as best it could to the president’s gain. Sergei Shakhrai handled relations with the governors and republic presidents, most of whom swung into line.65 The Kremlin collected explicit endorsements, among them from dignitaries (such as Yegor Gaidar) who had split with Yeltsin, and unformalized support from the Russian Orthodox Church and the military hierarchy. The mass media, and especially the three national television channels, on which paid advertising for the candidates opened on May 14, were of special concern. The ORT and RTR networks were owned by the state; NTV was privately owned and had been very critical of the war in Chechnya, but it broadcast on sufferance of Yeltsin’s government. And yet, coercion was not the primary reason the media sided with Yeltsin in 1996. Since the alternatives appeared to boil down to him or a return of the communists who had censored the press for seventy years, it seemed to most journalists and media managers, as Igor Malashenko put it, that “damaging” as it might have been for the press to take sides in a political conflict, its corporate self-interest meant it “did not have any choice” in the matter. Malashenko remained as president of NTV while moonlighting as Yeltsin’s chief media adviser. Although he considered resigning or going on leave from the network, “I believed this would have been just cant, because everybody in Russia would know that this is not the United States, that my position in the [NTV] group would be the same.”66 Between mid-May and mid-June, 55 percent of all campaign stories on ORT’s nightly prime-time news mentioned Yeltsin, compared to 35 percent mentions for Zyuganov; on NTV’s program, it was 59 percent and 34 percent.67
None of these methods, however, was enough to dictate victory. Yeltsin was not able to oust Yavlinskii, and the backing from Lebed would take effect only in a runoff round. The electronic and print media had been skewed toward Our Home Is Russia in 1995, and that had not done the party or Chernomyrdin much good.68 A great many citizens distrusted the news media and did not believe them to be even-handed; almost 40 percent of Russians had questions about coverage of the 1995 Duma campaign and more than 50 percent about the 1996 presidential campaign.69 Even with the media elite’s bias toward Yeltsin, the flow of information and advocacy that got through to individual voters was quite large and diverse. Paid ads aside, a lottery gave all candidates eight free ten-minute slots on national television. As of the beginning of June, a non-trivial 45 percent of the population had been exposed to Zyuganov campaign materials on television, on the radio, or in print in the preceding week; for Yeltsin, it was 58 percent.70 And news bulletins, particularly on NTV, offered substantial reportage on opposition candidates (mostly by replaying their words) and on issues, such as economic difficulties and Yeltsin’s health, that were inconvenient for the president.71
From his single-digit popularity in January, Yeltsin rebounded to a plurality of the votes in June and a second-round majority in July. In Aleksandr Oslon’s first systematic poll of the electorate on March 1, 13 percent of Russians intending to vote in the first round preferred Yeltsin and 19 percent Zyuganov. Over the course of March and April, Yeltsin’s anticipated vote share doubled while Zyuganov’s only edged up. The first Oslon poll to show Yeltsin ahead of Zyuganov, by 23 percent to 22 percent, was on April 13, but they were tied on April 20 and again on May 4. On May 11 Yeltsin nosed ahead by 4 points, by 28 percent to 24 percent, and he never looked back after that. By June 11, 36 percent of citizens intended to vote for him and Zyuganov’s expected share had dipped to 18 percent.72 The spread narrowed some by election day, but any way you look at it was a blockbuster recovery. And it was achieved in all demographic subgroups, be they by age, community size and location, gender, or social class.73
One device whereby Yeltsin could overcome his initial deficit in public opinion was to employ incumbency to bolster his image, shape the campaign agenda, and offer amends for the deficiencies of the previous five years. Even before declaring his candidacy, he issued the first of a string of edicts directing material assistance to target groups. On January 25 he decreed a 50 percent increase in payments to recipients of old-age, survivor, and invalid pensions above the minimum pension. Another decree raised grants for students in universities and institutes by 20 percent. On February 1 he ordered stricter schedules for payment of wages to public-sector workers, including the military and police. Orders to clear up arrears in the nonstate sector were given the next week.
The foreign-policy realm offered opportunities for reputation building. Bill Clinton had agreed in 1995 to hold off on NATO enlargement until after the election, responding to Yeltsin’s plea that “my position heading into 1996 is not exactly brilliant.”74 Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany visited Yeltsin on February 20, four days after his statement of candidacy, and pronounced him “the best president for Russia.” Kohl, it is claimed, offered Yeltsin political asylum in Germany should he lose the election, a suggestion Yeltsin found insulting.75 In March the IMF unveiled a $10.2 billion loan to the Russian government, the second-largest it had ever made. On April 2 Yeltsin signed an agreement with President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus to create a “community” of the post-Soviet neighbors. The document opened, he said, “a qualitatively new stage in the history of our two brotherly peoples.” National television broadcast the Kremlin event live. On April 20 the G-7 leaders were in town for a joint meeting with Russia, chaired by Yeltsin, on nuclear security. It was done, according to President Clinton’s deputy secretary of state, Strobe Talbott, “for no other purpose than to give Yeltsin a pre-election boost.” A meeting at Spaso House with opposition candidates was on Clinton’s itinerary. “It’s okay to shake hands with Zyuganov, Bill,” Yeltsin said, “but don’t kiss him.”76 Summiteers Clinton, Jacques Chirac of France, and Ryutaro Hashimoto of Japan stayed on an extra day for bilateral talks and photo ops. Several days later Yeltsin was off to China for a state visit. On May 16 UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali helpfully paid his respects in Moscow, and on May 17 a summit of CIS leaders did the same. James D. Wolfensohn of the World Bank stopped by the Kremlin on May 23 to announce a $500 million project for the coal industry. “The timing of the loan is purely coincidental,” he said with a straight face. “But I was happy to do it in support of the government’s reform efforts.”77