Russian leader Boris Yeltsin, campaigning for his republic's presidency, made a pitch to religious voters Saturday with a promise to return thousands of churches that Communists confiscated and mostly left to rot.
"We are in favor of sitting at the negotiating table with church leaders, to return the assets that were taken away," Yeltsin told democratic activists supporting his June 12 election bid for the newly created Russian presidency.The white-maned Yeltsin smiled broadly as supporters in an auditorium in central Moscow chanted his name and applauded.
In May, the Russian republic's parliament voted to create the presidency and hold direct elections June 12. Yeltsin is favored to defeat his main opponents, former Soviet Interior Minister Vadim Bakatin and former Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov. Both reportedly have the tacit backing of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Yeltsin's rival.
As he campaigned, Yeltsin sounded as much like a Western politician as a radical Soviet reformer, promising shorter hours and higher wages for workers.
He also said Communist Party cells should be be barred from workplaces and government offices, and that the 15 republics - not the central government - should have the right to levy taxes.
Yeltsin also called for an end to all nuclear testing, two days after Gorbachev promised only reduced testing in the Kazakhstan republic to the south of Russia.
And he demanded an end to the Soviet dispensing of foreign aid - a popular notion among reformers angry over continued Soviet subsidies to allies such as Cuba, especially when the Soviet economy cannot afford it.
Yeltsin's statement on churches apparently was aimed at tens of millions of Russian Orthodox Christians in the vast Russian Federation, home to half the Soviet population.
Religious fervor across the country has survived despite seven decades of official atheism under the Communist Party, which closed thousands of churches or converted them to factories, warehouses and even swimming pools.
Moscow, which once boasted a church on nearly every block, still has dozens of onion-domed buildings, but most are crumbling. Gorbachev's government has allowed many to be reopened, but most are still shuttered.
After his speech, Yeltsin met with Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Alexi II to discuss the proposal to return its property. Yeltsin can still take action on the issue as the Russian parliament chief, the job he won last year.
Yeltsin, 60, said the Soviet system had forced 40 percent of the population into poverty. "The constant humiliation of buying food by ration coupons are hourly reminders to people that they are slaves in this country," he declared.
Bakatin, the interior minister, told the independent Russian Information Agency Saturday that Yeltsin's government is pushing toward creation of a market economy without enough consideration for people who will be hurt in the transition, including the elderly and poor.
Yeltsin's other opponent, Ryzhkov, on Saturday unveiled part of his preliminary program that called for a carefully controlled transition to a market economy and limited privatization of property, the agency reported.
"I am firmly convinced that there is a way out of this complex, difficult situation, a way for Russia's rebirth," he said.