Outside the hospital room, it was clear just how high the stakes were. On the very day that the doctors would make a decision, Yeltsin’s impertinent (and ambitious) national-security adviser, Aleksandr Lebed, warned ominously that conditions in Russia’s armed forces were so dire–no soldier has been paid since July–that ““mutiny’’ was possible. The government’s current paralysis, he added pointedly, was not helping matters. ““Lebed wants to skip the doctors and go right to the priests so they can administer last rites,’’ one Russian journalist said caustically. ““He assumes he’s the next president.’’ In Washington, where the Clinton administration had made no secret of its backing for Boris Yeltsin, there was apprehension–albeit mixed with at least a little relief. For two frustrating years the State Department, the CIA and the National Security Council had spent a lot of time and energy trying to figure out just how sick the president of Russia was. Now, at last, the mystery might be over.
When the doctors finally emerged after almost three hours in Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital, the news was far from grim. Yeltsin, DeBakey said, was fit enough to withstand the triple or quadruple bypass operation required to repair his clogged arteries. Just not quite yet. The doctors confirmed that Yeltsin had had what in lay terms amounts to a third heart attack between the first and second rounds of this summer’s election; he was also anemic, due to internal bleeding that DeBakey said he thought–but didn’t know for sure–was related to a gastrointestinal problem. The doctors’ decision, therefore, was to delay the surgery for six to 10 weeks, mainly in the hope of identifying the cause of the bleeding.
DeBakey insisted there was nothing ominous in the delay. The good news, he said, far outweighed the bad. There was, first, clear evidence of improvement in the performance of Yeltsin’s heart since the summer’s ““ischemic episode.’’ DeBakey said the president was lucid, displayed a sense of humor and ““looked great.’’ Most surprising of all, DeBakey asserted that Yeltsin’s liver and kidneys were ““normal and healthy’’– contradicting numerous reports (most recently from Yeltsin’s former press secretary) that both showed the signs of the president’s fondness for vodka. Asked if he was optimistic that the president would make a normal recovery once the surgery is finally performed, DeBakey said flatly: ““I’m absolutely optimistic.’’ The president, he said, could be expected to resume ““reasonably normal activities six weeks to two months after the operation.''
For the moment, anyway, the news punctured the sense of imminent crisis that had been building in Moscow since Yeltsin went into the hospital on Sept. 13. Though he will remain under observation either in the hospital or at a sanitarium near Moscow, his doctors said he could withstand at least a few hours of work a day. And on Saturday, Russian TV showed Yeltsin meeting with his defense minister, Igor Rodionov–and warning the West not to expand NATO before reaching some kind of security agreement with Russia.
It was the first substantive remark anyone outside Yeltsin’s inner circle had heard the president make in weeks–and his advisers say there will be more to come. The president’s urgent political task now is clear: blunt the perception that a succession struggle is already underway. Two weeks ago, after Dr. Akchurin’s public declaration that the president had had a third heart attack, a furious Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist Party chief, had publicly called on Yeltsin to resign. With Yeltsin shielded behind hospital walls and rumors about his health flying (the Financial Times, quoting Kremlin ““insiders,’’ said he had had a stroke and could work only 15 minutes a day–a report DeBakey said was false), the remark resonated in Russia. After the doctors’ relatively upbeat assessment last week, ““we now have to show that Zyuganov was wrong,’’ says one Yeltsin adviser. ““We have to show that the Yeltsin era is not over, and that the election was not some kind of fraud.''
Washington’s stake in that outcome is also considerable. Many of Boris Yeltsin’s political opponents are outraged at the cover-up that took place this summer. They believe that had the Russian public known the real extent of the president’s illness, Zyuganov, his communist rival, would have won the election. They’re also convinced Washington knew the exact extent of Yeltsin’s heart troubles (they cite Vice President Al Gore’s close working relationship with Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin) and was thus complicit in the cover-up. In the eyes of many communists and Russian nationalists, that alone is proof that the West was not interested in a free and fair election–just a Yeltsin victory.
Not so, says the Clinton administration. U.S. intelligence agencies insist they were groping around pretty much like everyone else. ““You had to be careful,’’ one CIA official told NEWSWEEK–““it [got] close to guesswork.’’ The confusion wasn’t entirely accidental. Yeltsin’s political foes were run- ning a disinformation campaign about his health. ““They knew U.S. intelligence was interested,’’ said the CIA official. ““They would put stuff out on the street [for American intelligence to pick up].’’ In the months before the summer election, U.S. analysts had spent countless hours trying to get a sense of the president’s overall condition–with particular emphasis on his perceived drinking problem. Doctors pored over videos, examining Yeltsin’s skin color, the whites of his eyes, looking at whether his hands shook or his speech was slurred. Sources say now that no one drew any firm conclusions.
To the contrary, CIA officials say that despite several instances in which Yeltsin appeared drunk publicly, the agency always maintained that there is no concrete evidence that he suffers from any serious liver or kidney problems. So when Dr. DeBakey said much the same thing last Wednesday, ““I wanted to stand up and clap,’’ one intelligence source in Washington said.
But when Yeltsin disappeared between the first round and the runoff election last July, Washington insists it was in the dark about just how sick he was. ““I mean, it was clear he had more than a cold,’’ says one official, but how much more, he says, no one really knew. Officials speculated about an angina attack brought on by the stress of the campaign; they phoned around to outside cardiologists, hoping someone had some insight. But in the end, they concede, they knew much less than what DeBakey revealed last week.
The intense medical watch on Boris Yeltsin hardly ends now. Before leaving Moscow Friday, DeBakey acknowledged that the risk of still another heart attack exists–““it always does when you have coronary-artery disease of this kind.’’ He also conceded it is possible that the date of the operation could be moved up should Yeltsin’s current, relatively stable condition change.
Then there are those matters outside the president’s hospital room–the affairs of state that he is supposed to attend to. Moscow needs to get through what Lebed warned could be a ““hot autumn’’ unless the deepening morale problems in the military are addressed. The devilishly complex details of the peace deal in the breakaway republic of Chechnya also must be negotiated. Energy workers in the Far East are on strike for lack of back pay; the economy nationwide appears to be weakening. Boris Yeltsin ran so hard for the presidency of Russia that it nearly killed him. Now he needs to work equally hard at recovering–fast.
