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Russian Elections

Zyuganov seeks ties with other candidates to oust Yeltsin

June 8, 1996
Web posted at: 3:20 p.m. EDT (1920 GMT)

MOSCOW (CNN) -- Just about a week before the Russian presidential election, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said he's willing to join forces with other opposition candidates to beat President Boris Yeltsin.

Zyuganov

With no less than 10 candidates in the fray and Yeltsin surging in the polls, Zyuganov on Saturday even offered to unite with ultra-nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

"The popular patriotic bloc is open to new ideas and people," Zyuganov said. "We are ready for sincere dialogue, honest discussion and business-like cooperation with anybody who loves his country and I am sure that's the overwhelming majority in Russia."

Tuleyev

Zyuganov's offer, however, has so far been accepted by only one person in the race: Firebrand Communist Aman Tuleyev said he was dropping out to back Zyuganov.

Most of the other candidates are reluctant to band together. Reformist economist Grigory Yavlinsky -- a man many Yeltsin supporters desperately want on their side -- is still ruling out any deals.

Communist rally

"Yeltsin's policies would divide the society more and more and that would bring Russia to serious conflicts," Yavlinsky said.

And populist Aleksandr Lebed, a former war hero, is ruling out any alliance with Zhirinovsky. "I tried to picture myself as defense minister in Zhirinovsky's administration and realized I'd be in charge of washing soldiers boots in the Indian Ocean and I understood that's not for me."

But according to campaign strategist Andrei Fyodorov, Zyuganov is keen to forge ties because he wants to be seen "as a moderate....as a person who can cooperate with the different forces" before the June 16 election.

Yavlinsky

Zyuganov also reached out to church-going Russians Saturday, eager to dispel notions that he is anti-religion. Thousands at the Moscow stadium cheered his biblical references, and went wild at veiled references to Yeltsin and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev:

"Let us recall what was predicted in the Apocalypse," Zyuganov said. "The devil sent two beasts from hell, one with a mark on his head, and the other, the antichrist, puts a mark on people's hands."

Gorbachev has a large purple birthmark on his forehead and Yeltsin is missing two fingers on his left hand from a childhood accident.

Meantime, the man they are all seeking to unseat, Yeltsin, got a boost when the Central Bank of Russia agreed to give some five trillion roubles ($1 billion) to help finance the president's pre-election largess.

Bank officials earlier had protested the president's request, saying it was a threat to its independence and that it could lead to even more inflation.

Yeltsin, trying to rival Zyuganov's Soviet-style spending promises, has ordered billions of dollars in wages, benefits, tax breaks and giveaways designed to woo voters.

CNN Correspondent Jonathan Mann, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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