Yeltsin Pledges To Serve Out Term
Russian President Boris Yeltsin denied Friday that he would resign and promised to serve out the rest of his term as president until new elections in 2000.
"I want to say that I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to resign. I will work as I'm supposed to for my constitutional term," he said on national television. "In 2000, there will be an election for a new president, and I will not run."
Click here for Yeltsin's interview
That was Yeltsin's answer to persistent reports he is preparing to step down, including a report by CBS News, that he has already signed an undated resignation to be submitted in the near future.
Even so, the president seemed almost a bystander today as the Russian political establishment scrambled to form a new government and find a way out the economic chaos here.
The Communist majority in the parliament is demanding the president give up some of his powers and demanding positions in a new government as the price for confirming his choice for prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin.
But the Communists want more, wage and price and currency controls, major industries nationalized, and central economic planning. In short, for Russia to turn her back on the West and return to the closed economy of the old Soviet Union.
 Ludmila |
The real bystanders in all this are the ordinary Russians, like Ludmila, who was shopping for few cold cuts at the corner store. She is 92, and because of inflation, her monthly pension, which was worth $68 last week, is now worth $34.
"Things were a lot better under the czar," she says, "but we Russians, we'll survive, the way we always have, selling and stealing, selling and stealing."