Boris Yeltsin celebrated his 68th birthday Monday as usual in a sickbed, ignored by ordinary Russians and threatened with impeachment by a hostile parliament.
His birthday "gift" from the State Duma was a budgetary amendment demanding a 40 percent cut in Kremlin spending.Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who really runs Russia, brought flowers to the sanitarium where Yeltsin increasingly spends more time. But it was a perfunctory visit, cut short by more pressing matters.
Primakov has been meeting with Vice President Al Gore and other potential benefactors at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He is trying to persuade reluctant Western donors to cough up more aid so Russia can pay off $17 billion in loans that come due this year.
The International Monetary Fund, which put together a $22.6 billion loan package last summer, essentially froze the deal after Russia devalued the ruble and defaulted on some of its debts. New loans depend on the Duma's willingness to draft a realistic budget, with the IMF insisting that the one already approved isn't good enough.
Yeltsin is largely irrelevant to these negotiations. His birthday barely rated a mention in Russia's media, which appears to be more interested in President Clinton's impeachment trial, and he in turn has barely mentioned the economic crisis gripping his country, leaving that to others.
To most Russians, Yeltsin has become what The Economist magazine calls a "non-president."
He underwent quintuple bypass surgery after winning re-election in 1996 and has since been sidelined by repeated illnesses ranging from recurrent heart trouble to respiratory infections and now bleeding ulcers.
In a way, Yeltsin resembles Lenin, whose embalmed body still lies on public display in a mausoleum on Moscow's Red Square.
Just as Lenin became the "Father of Communism," so too did Yeltsin come to symbolize the "New Russia" that turned its back on communism. Eight years ago, at the age of 60, he clambered atop a tank to rally democrats against a coup attempt by hard-line communists. The following year, he declared communism dead and met U.S. President George Bush to cement a "New World Order."
Now Yeltsin and Lenin are both pickled.
Lenin's body has been preserved by the Institute of Biological Sciences since his death 75 years ago. Regularly checked for fungal growth and other signs of deterioration, the waxy cadaver spends two months a year suspended in a vat of embalming fluid, then is put on display again until its next immersion.
Yeltsin is likewise checked for signs of deterioration in a body that has suffered years of alcohol abuse. Doctors keep him alive and conscious with regular hospital stays and long convalescences at the Barvikha sanitarium outside Moscow, but visitors describe his manner as "robotic" and his features as waxy as Lenin's.
In 1993, Yeltsin attempted to have Lenin buried but never followed through for fear of a political backlash. All he succeeded in doing was getting rid of the goose-stepping honor guard around Lenin's tomb, still visited by long lines of pensioners and others nostalgic for communism.
However, two polls published last week by the Public Opinion Fund show that most Russians finally want to bury Lenin; the number has risen from 42 percent to 52 percent this past year. However, 85 percent also regret the passing of the Soviet Union and its socialist safety net, up from 65 percent a year ago.
Other polls conducted by the same institute suggest that most Russians want to bury Yeltsin along with Lenin. His public approval rating is in the single digits and attempts to impeach him have generated nothing but a giant yawn.
Holger Jensen is international editor of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. E-mail: hjens@aol.com.