With the start of the election campaign, I again began travelling round the country, meeting people in the streets and squares, in businesses, educational institutions and public associations. I instantly came up against obstruction and attempts to disrupt my scheduled meetings. There were refusals to make premises available, and meetings would be moved at the last minute to less accessible and spacious venues. Meetings were banned at a number of educational institutions, including my own Stavropol Agricultural Institute.
As a rule, I found myself speaking in halls and at other locations that were full to bursting, with people standing in the aisles, sitting on the steps, the stage and the floor. Crowds stood at wide open doors where that was possible, or, sometimes, listened to the broadcast on local radio or from loudspeakers at the entrances.
I was subjected to a conspiracy of silence on the part of the media under government control, and to wild, venomous misconduct by extreme communist and nationalist groups. I came up against cutting discourtesy on the part of provincial leaders afraid to look me in the eye, who failed to appear either to welcome or to bid me goodbye.
In spite of all that, I had no intention of giving up on travelling around the country and meeting the voters. Between March and early June I visited dozens of cities in more than 20 regions and attended many meetings with thousands of people. They were organized in St Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude, Kemerovo, Barnaul and Omsk, Volgograd and Rostov-on-Don. Also in Stavropol, Samara and Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Ufa and Vladimir. As a rule, several meetings were held in each city.
In a number of cities, television presenters behaved admirably and even, given the circumstances of the time, courageously. For example, in Rostov-on-Don I had a frank discussion with journalist Dmitry Dibrov, broadcast without any ‘editing’. In the same city, for over an hour, I answered questions from hundreds of Rostov citizens at an open-air gathering in the city park.
It sometimes seemed that the further we were from Moscow the more confidently and freely people behaved, including the local civic leaders. In the Altai I had meetings with the governor and the chairman of the regional legislative assembly, held a press conference and spoke on regional television.
Because more than a third of citizens in the Altai voted Communist, I particularly focused on them in my speech. Here is what I said, and I think it remains relevant today.
Frankly, I would not have joined the present electoral campaign if I was persuaded that today’s Communists had updated the Party and had a new programme. If you look at those around Zyuganov, though, these are the people who betrayed the president of the USSR and the cause of reform, who blocked the signing of the Union Treaty, reform of the Party and implementation of the programme to resolve the crisis. Today’s Communist Party of the Russian Federation is incapable of leading the country out of crisis.
Yes, I know what I was unable to do. I know where I miscalculated and that no one can absolve me of responsibility for that. I cannot free myself of blame, and, most importantly, for the fact that I did not succeed.
I am in contact with the leaders of other political and public associations, from Svyatoslav Fedorov to Grigoriy Yavlinsky. We meet, talk and look for ways to unite because the ‘government party’ and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation today have about 40–45 per cent of the votes. The remaining 50–60 per cent of voters, perhaps even 70 per cent, are still wondering who to vote for.
Our two ‘front-runners’ are keen to impose a false choice: either Yeltsin or Zyuganov. Yeltsin is counting on winning the election with the anti-Communist vote. Zyuganov’s team believe the easiest way to win is by criticizing the current, weak president, who has frittered away his popular support. I believe the 50–60–70 per cent of uncommitted voters should reject these tactics. Yavlinsky, Lebed, Fedorov and I have agreed that each of us will conduct his presidential campaign, travelling round the country, and then meet up. Each of us will be able to assess his own chances, and in May review the situation and decide how best we should unite to create a really strong team capable of taking power.
We have spoken to Aman Tuleyev and agreed that, irrespective of the election results, the candidates of all parties, when the list is finally decided, will make a public statement (the proposal is Tuleyev’s and I support it) that we are in favour of fair democratic elections, and letting the Russian people decide. They will have an opportunity to hear the manifestos and plans and freely express their will. I think that is an important step forward.
Over the months of the election campaign there were plenty of disagreeable experiences. Here is just one. On the morning of 24 April 1996, I arrived in Omsk where a meeting with the city’s voters had been announced. The region’s leaders ignored the meeting and a hostile crowd had gathered before the meeting at the Political Education Club. Representatives of the local administration suggested I should go in through the back entrance but I flatly refused. I walked calmly through the main entrance and foyer towards the stairs leading to the first floor and a crowded hall, where some 2,000 people were waiting. At this point a sinister-looking young man rushed forward and struck a blow on a part of my head that paratroopers are trained to strike. A security officer managed to push the attacker back and that helped to deflect the blow. At this point a group of individuals who had been standing to one side and watching attempted to free the attacker, who had been detained.
The start of the meeting was delayed and a fairly tense situation had arisen, further aggravated by groups who had infiltrated the hall with the clear intention of disrupting proceedings. This is how the outcome of the incident was described in Moskovskiye Novosti:
When Mikhail Gorbachev came on to the stage in the wake of riot police, he stood silent, listening to the yelling and jeering in the crowd and suddenly roared, ‘This is how fascism begins in Russia!’
The hall fell silent, if not immediately. ‘Actually, after that I just feel like leaving’, Gorbachev continued. ‘Not because I am scared of scum, but because I fear for normal people, and judging from the faces in the audience, I calculate they make up about half of those present. I am concerned for them in this crush, because they need to vote for a new Russia. Leave this fracas, citizens, and remember, the coming four years will determine the fate of our country for decades to come. Do not allow yourselves to be driven into slavery.’
And Gorbachev departed.
I believe the attack on me and the disruption of my speech to the people of Omsk were deliberately planned. I heard later that Zhirinovsky’s ‘Liberal Democratic’ Party had been behind the incident. A drunken LDP official let that slip at Zhirinovsky’s birthday party, saying, ‘What a reception we gave Gorbachev in Omsk!’ When I heard about that, I forwarded my information to the Prosecutor General’s Office, only to receive a meaningless bureaucratic non-response.
In a number of cities, Communist Party representatives tried to disrupt my meetings with heckling and barracking, but I gave them as good as I got, and others attending the meeting shut them up. At these meetings voters were constantly asking about my relations with other presidential candidates: Grigoriy Yavlinsky, Alexander Lebed and Svyatoslav Fedorov. Had we agreed to form a coalition of democratic forces? If you do not come to an agreement, I was told in no uncertain terms, you will just be asking us to waste our votes. The situation was described very bluntly: could I, Yavlinsky and the others not understand that our personal ambitions were completely irrelevant when what Russia needed was unity?