Reaction in Russia to President Yeltsin's latest bout of illness has been muted. Politicians have been dispassionate in their remarks. The Moscow stock and currency exchanges barely registered a tremor at the news that Russia's president was in hospital again. The mood was best summed up by Moscow's mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov, who told reporters during a visit to Stockholm last week that he didn't really think the situation in the country had radically changed. "The president is unwell rather often," he added, in the type of understatement for which Russian politicians are rarely noted.
Mr Luzhkov is one of the candidates strongly favoured to win the presidential election due to be held next year. His coyness can be put down to the fact that conveying the image of a stable situation in Russia suits his current game plan. Any political or medical emergency could bring about early presidential elections and should a vote on the presidency be held this year rather than next the indications are that it could be won by the country's prime minister, Mr Yevgeny Primakov, who, the polls say, is currently Russia's most popular politician. By this time next year, however, with the possibility of a further deepening of the economic crisis, Mr Primakov could have become the least popular politician in Russia.
Other candidates in the race to succeed Mr Yeltsin include the swashbuckling General Alexander Lebed who, as governor of Krasnoyarsk, rules a vast Siberian territory several times the size of France, Mr Grigory Yavlinsky who represents the fragile democratic tradition and the largely-discredited but extremely wealthy former prime minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin. As for the communists their challenge for power appears to have been weakened rather than strengthened by public discontent. Their leader, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, who finished second to Mr Yeltsin in 1996, has been promoting an alliance with Mayor Luzhkov to the extent that a split is developing in his party between his supporters and those who want an undiluted communist programme.
The Supreme Court has ruled that Mr Yeltsin cannot stand for a third term. But one of Mr Yeltsin's senior aides recently raised eyebrows by saying a proposed union between Russia and Belarus could create a new State with a new constitution which could allow Mr Yeltsin to run for the presidency. Against this background of political machination, the long-suffering Russian public struggles for personal survival. In a poll published last week Russians were asked what were the best and worst events of 1998. There was general agreement that the economic crisis was the low point of the year but 56 per cent of those polled could not could up with a single "good event" in the past twelve months.
Elections for the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, are to be held this autumn at which the apathy of the electorate will be accurately measured in advance of the presidential poll. Those who bother to vote are likely to increase communist and nationalist dominance of the Duma but this swing to what are known as the "red-brown" groupings will not be a reliable indication of what may happen in the presidential vote. It seems unlikely in any event that Russians will get a president capable of leading them out of the current financial wilderness.