CET ON-LINE* 09-May-96

Thursday, 09 May 1996

Volume 1, Issue 334

Mikhail Gorbachev, the invisible candidate in opinion polls

before Russia's June presidential election, said on Wednesday

he would press on with his campaign but that he favoured a

liberal alliance. Speaking in Volgograd, once the wartime

"hero-city" of Stalingrad and now a stronghold of resurgent

Communists, the former Soviet leader kept cool despite

repeated barracking.

"Let there be pluses, let there be minuses, "Gorby' will be

there," he told reporters.

Gorbachev, credited with the support of just one or two

percent, hit out at both front-runners in polls for the June

16 vote. He said Communist Gennady Zyuganov would reverse the

perestroika reforms which Gorbachev began in the late 1980s.

"I don't believe he won't drag us back," he said.

President Boris Yeltsin had crippled the economy with

"stupidity" and could not end the conflict in Chechnya.

"My programme will halt this endless destruction of Russia as

a nation, of its spirit, of its scientific potential,"

Gorbachev said.

He told an audience of about 500 people that he favoured a

"broad alliance" with two liberal rivals.

"If I am elected, I will support links with the political

movement led by Svyatoslav Fyodorov and Grigory Yavlinsky."

Liberal economist Yavlinsky and Fyodorov, a millionaire eye

surgeon, have discussed a so-called "third force" to grab the

centre and overhaul Zyuganov and Yeltsin. But neither liberal

candidate has evinced much interest in the almost hopeless

Gorbachev. Fyodorov seemed to ruled out an alliance - which

had been expected to include ex-general Alexander Lebed -

at a news conference in Moscow on Wednesday.

"The most realistic and best option for us is to go in to the

presidential election independently, in three columns,"

Russian news agencies quoted Fyodorov as saying.

Gorbachev said he would press on with his campaign despite

being punched by a man in Omsk on April 24 in what he

described as a "provocation" by Vladimir Zhirinovsky's

ultra-nationalists.

There is little evidence Gorbachev is garnering any real

support in the country. Even among those who give him credit

for freeing them from Communism, few are ready to vote for

him. Half the crowd applauded hecklers who demanded Gorbachev

be brought to book for destroying the Soviet Union. The

65-year-old responded with sharp words - "What's all this

shouting?" - and an imperious chop of the hand.

Gorbachev may have bargained on extra media coverage by being

in Volgograd a day ahead of Yeltsin, who arrives on Thursday

for commemorations of the Allied victory in 1945.

But that also meant coming to a city deeply proud of its

sacrifices in one of the turning points of World War Two, at

the height of Russia's annual festival of remembrance which

has become a focus of nostalgia for the old Soviet Union.

"Satan" and "Traitor" yelled one old woman as Gorbachev arrived

at his hotel. "They sold our people, they sold the memory of

our victory." She would vote for Zyuganov, she said.

Yet the former Soviet president, who has never participated

in an election, seemed to be enjoying the hurly-burly of the

campaign trail. Even the hecklers cheered when he laid into

Yeltsin and he raised a laugh when recalling his rival's

slogan that reform would be completed by those who started

it.

"Well, that's me," Gorbachev said with a smile.

Gorbachev and his regal, immaculately coutured wife Raisa were

mobbed for autographs. But most people seemed to see them

simply as historic celebrities.

"Mikhail Sergevich, we all respect what you did for us," one

caller to a radio call-in show told Gorbachev. "Your place in

history is assured. So my question on your candidacy is:

Why?"

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