Rude awakening - unpaid workers in Russia may vote for return of communism - includes hypothetical letter from Western heads of state - Cover Story

National Review, June 17, 1996 by David Satter, Arnold Beichman

Five years after the break-up of Soviet Communism, Russia is in a state of anarchy, with its reforms in shambles and its Communists once again willing to proclaim themselves. THE afternoon light filtered through the linden and chestnut trees in the city park, and martial music played over loudspeakers attached to the branches as a large crowd waited in the humid heat for the beginning of a speech by Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist candidate for president.

After a day of campaigning in other parts of the pro-Communist Bryansk region 250 miles southwest of Moscow, near the border with Ukraine, Zyuganov had come to Klintsy, a dilapidated city of 70,000 full of weathered wooden houses and rusting five-story housing projects.

The mood of the crowd was both nervous and expectant. Virtually all the city's factories had been closed down and many people had gone for seven or eight months without pay. Klintsy was also in the heart of the Chernobyl radiation zone, and there had been no government payments for radiation exposure since February.

I asked a woman in a print dress if she was supporting Zyuganov.

''We will all vote for Zyuganov,'' she said, ''because we want someone to give us our lives back. There are only two factories in the city that are operating. All the others are dead. We want to be able to work. Only the businessmen are wealthy. Everyone else is unemployed and hungry.''

Others crowded around. ''The children in school have nothing to eat,'' said a middle-aged woman. ''In the fourth lesson in literature, my daughter fell into a coma. They said it was a sign of epilepsy but she is not the only one. The children are undernourished.''

''The pensioners have nothing to live on,'' said another woman. ''I worked for 41 years on the Boyevik collective farm. It's painful to work so hard and be left with nothing.''

''The pensioners at least get something,'' replied a man in a worker's cap. ''What about the workers? It's been seven months without pay.''

''Everyone's nerves are on edge,'' said another woman, ''We don't see any future.''

WITH only two weeks to go until the presidential elections, the scene in Klintsy is typical of much of Russia. The country is seething with discontent, and there is widespread fear of violence.

At the end of May, most public-opinion polls showed Yeltsin moving into the lead, but Russian polls have a tradition of inaccuracy, and at least one opinion poll showed Zyuganov with an overwhelming lead. At the same time, all the polls are almost certainly underestimating the appeal of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of the extreme nationalist Liberal Democratic Party.

The aggressiveness of the Communists, whose constituency includes pensioners, the poor, and others who feel cheated by the reforms carried out over the last five years, has inspired widespread fear. ''If Zyuganov is elected and tries to redistribute property,'' said Vyacheslav Golubtsov, a local newspaper editor in the pro-Communist Kostroma oblast, ''it will be extremely dangerous.

Many of the banks belong to criminal groups who have no intention of giving up their property.''Many of Russia's new businessmen have taken steps to send both their money and their families out of the country in the event of a Zyuganov victory. At the same time, however, many doubt that Yeltsin will surrender power no matter who wins the election. General Aleksandr Korzhakov, Yeltsin's chief of security and closest confidant, called in May for the postponement of the elections to preserve social peace. As one Yeltsin campaign aide put it, ''We would like to win the election legally. But if that is not possible, Yeltsin is making plans to make sure that he stays in power anyway.'' In any case, there is widespread fear that Yeltsin will falsify the results. According to Kremlin officials, about one-third of the voters will not go to the polls, and the Communists are mobilizing 200,000 poll-watchers to make sure the non-voters' votes are not cast by others.

The election, in many respects, will be a referendum on five years of reform which have changed Russia beyond recognition. In a country where there were long lines for bread, the stores are now full of goods. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, where twenty years ago a Volkswagen drew a crowd, the streets are choked with traffic and there are many late-model Western cars.

Nonetheless, there is no guarantee that Russian voters will give a ringing endorsement of reform.

THE direct reason that millions of people are likely to support totalitarian parties is that across the length and breadth of the country, people are not being paid. The situation in Klintsy is typical: paychecks are anywhere from three to eight months behind, and there have been delays in paying pensions, family subsidies, and even ''radiation'' subsidies for those affected by the accident at Chernobyl.

People are not being paid because there is no money in the government budget. Russia has one of the most confiscatory tax systems in the world, taxing profits at over 90 per cent, but this has not helped the government to collect money. Faced with the choice of breaking the law or going bankrupt, businessmen in Russia regularly do most of their business off the books. Officially, the government collects 70 per cent of the money it requires but, in reality, the figure is believed to be closer to 50 per cent.