Russia's middle class, whose emergence was such a source of pride to President Yeltsin, has been facing up to the fact for days now that it is the first victim of the country's financial crisis.

The emerging middle class - workers in banks and private businesses, some of them foreign, small-scale entrepreneurs or journalists, many of them young people - had scarcely escaped the poverty of the USSR when they were once again forced to evaluate their immediate future.

"I cannot imagine life without my credit card," said Katya (25), whose savings account at the SBS Agro bank was blocked, like thousands of others, as the bank has hovered for the last week on the edge of bankruptcy.

"Nobody can imagine the collapse of SBS Agro: all the government workers, as well as several large Russian and foreign companies, have accounts there," added Katya, a former employee of the bank.

Previous financial crises were sparked off by monetary reforms and mainly wiped out the ruble savings of millions of petty savers. The Communist Party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, gleefully told a group of young journalists from Moscow Echo radio station this week: "It is not the workers but young people like you who are the victims of this crisis.

"Sure we are the first victims, but it won't take long for the workers to feel the effect of the galloping inflation already in progress," said Yekaterina, a worker at a foreign firm dealing in medical equipment. Like her husband, she hasn't been paid her salary this month as the bank blocked her employer's account.

The entire Russian banking system has been teetering on the brink of collapse since August 17th when the authorities effectively devalued the ruble and simultaneously froze the government domestic debt market. That left many banks sitting on virtually worthless paper they could not swap for cash to cover liabilities.

Yekaterina, like many thousands of others, also fears losing her job if the company she works for pulls out of Russia.

The 18 months of relative calm which preceded the current crisis had reassured Russia's embryonic middle classes, which make up an estimated five to 20 per cent of the population, and which actually has something to lose.

Now this social stratum, which two years ago was the first group to leap to the support of Yeltsin's presidential campaign - partly as a reflex against the fear of the Communists returning to power - see themselves as betrayed and abandoned by those in power.

"A president capable of disappearing for three days at the height of the crisis does not exist for me," said Oleg, a 40-year-old lawyer, referring to President Yeltsin's three-day sojourn up to yesterday at a country residence 100 km outside the capital.

Oleg said, however, that he would not go out into the street and demonstrate, even he if discovered one day that he was totally ruined.

Sasha, a 24-year-old worker at a television station, went out to help man the barricades in the attempted coup of 1991, to support Yeltsin and defend democracy.

He now realises that no amount of demonstrating will get him his money back. "We just have to carry on living and working," he said.