I did not regard Yavlinsky, Lebed or Fedorov as rivals but rather as partners, by and large, members of the same team. I believed that as each of us ran his own campaign it would become clear who had the best chance of winning, and we would then agree who should go forward as the unity candidate of the forces of democracy. That seemed to me entirely realistic, and I talked publicly about it. My visits to more than 20 regions persuaded me that a majority of people were entirely capable of seeing through the false choice being imposed on them and that there was a real demand for a third force.
The coming together never happened. My would-be partners lacked the political nous to see they would get nowhere on their own. The government actively fomented disunity among us, targeting primarily Lebed, whose popularity was in the ascendant. They allowed him to conduct his campaign unhampered and, after the first round of voting, seduced him with the offer of the post of secretary of the Russian Security Council. That left me with no option but to soldier on.
For the first time in several years I did get the opportunity of addressing the people on national television. There were no debates between the candidates (and to this day the Russian government evades them), but even a pre-recorded speech allowed me to explain my position to the viewers.
Let me talk about the main thing. The government. The first thing that needs to be done is to bring the government back under control. Its power should come from the people and it should always remain under popular control. Russia needs a president, not an autocrat, and certainly not a dictator. The fate of a vast nation cannot depend on the whims and moods and health of a single individual. We do not need the stick, with a royal carrot at public expense.
Parliament and the government should function routinely alongside the president, and have all the power needed to do so. At the top we need honest, knowledgeable people.
I intend to take rigorous measures to break the illegal conspiracy between unscrupulous politicians, corrupt officials and the criminal world. Russian citizens should feel they have the protection of the state wherever they are: at their workplace, in the street or at home.
What we must cherish above all else is good relations in this, our shared home. Russia was and remains a world of worlds. Russians, who are in the majority, have always lived in harmony with all our other peoples.
We need to restore the authority of the law, of legality, of the entire law-enforcement system, with support, not interference, from the state, independence of the judiciary, the rule of law above all else. That is what we need.
We can no longer leave our army in its present state. I will restore the prestige of the armed forces.
Social justice. For me, social justice is not levelling down and not welfare dependency, but can we really stand by and watch calmly as some throw money about all round the world, while the vast majority sink into poverty?
What I understand by social justice is a decent income for those able to work, and support for those in dire need. In Russia, it should finally be more profitable to earn honestly than to steal. Even in our present situation, I believe it is essential to help immediately those who find themselves below subsistence level. By that I am thinking of pensioners, the disabled, students and refugees.
From the Soviet experience, I have included in my manifesto those things that proved valuable: free education, available to every family regardless of their income; publicly available medical care. Of course, we must also improve the private sector, and it too must have the support of the state.
In my Russia, teachers, doctors, scientists and the intelligentsia will not be beggars.
The economy. I see the solution to these enormous social tasks and problems in boosting our own, Russian, industrial output. We cannot leave everything to take care of itself: we need to manage investment and credit, and have a positive policy on taxation and foreign economic links.
I expect private enterprise to play a major role, especially small and medium-sized businesses. All forms of property, whether private or public, will be securely protected by the law. It is essential for people to have free, peaceful enjoyment of their property, guaranteed by law, and to pay their taxes fairly. No more and no less.
Like everywhere else in the world, we will put all the strength of the state into protecting and supporting agricultural workers.
Today we need to be building not yesterday’s but tomorrow’s economy, and for that Russia needs to remain a great scientific power.
Foreign policy. To raise Russia’s international prestige, I will throw into the ring all the experience and authority I have acquired. In our commonwealth we need to move towards a new union on a basis of mutually beneficial cooperation. At the same time, Russia should not take on greater burdens than she can afford.
Finally, do not believe people who are again promising you the earth, swearing they will ‘lie down on the rail tracks’ if they do not deliver, that they can find a husband for every woman and all the rest of it. Only we, working together, can rescue Russia and ourselves from this situation. This is the only Russia we have, and we are all responsible for her.
The first round of the presidential election showed that the government had, all the same, succeeded in imposing its choice between the twin evils of Yeltsin and Zyuganov, each of whom obtained around one-third of the vote. A unity candidate of pro-democracy forces would probably have been able to give them a run for their money, but in isolation we picked up a total of only about one-quarter of the vote between us. Although – who knows the truth of the matter? There was no shortage of outright falsification of results and underhand ‘electoral fixing’. The declared total of votes in my favour in the different regions came in everywhere at a remarkably similar figure of around 1 per cent. Opinion polls, and even the initial counts which were presumably leaked through an oversight, told a different story. It was straining credibility to claim that a candidate able to muster 1.5 million signatures for the nomination papers in such a short time could have received so few votes in the actual election.
There was a revealing and completely outrageous incident involving my representative, Artur Umansky. He told me over the telephone from Chechnya that he was coming to Moscow with documents about serious falsification of the election results. We learned that shortly afterwards armed men burst into his house and took him away. He was never seen again. Our numerous enquiries addressed to the Interior Ministry and Prosecutor General’s Office got nowhere.
I have often said that the most honest elections in the entire history of the USSR and Russian Federation were those of 1989 and 1990. No one questioned them: they were simply fair. Everything after that is a sorry tale of how, instead of genuine, fair elections, a mere surrogate is set up. Each year has seen increasing application of tricky new techniques and fixes to prevent free expression of the will of the people. Whose interest is it in? Ultimately, the economy and business suffer, whose leading figures provided the funds for Yeltsin’s campaign; and the intelligentsia, who failed to sound the alarm and, for the most part, chose to look away from all the illegality and abuses employed to keep the Communists out, which were so successfully trialled during this race.
Letters relating to the 1996 presidential election campaign
Dear Mikhail Sergeyevich,
…The Soviet Union was destroyed by the organizers of the August coup attempt, and their act was legalized by the ‘Byelovezha brothers’, Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich.
If Gorbachev is to blame for anything, it is for being so merciful towards both lots.