Russian Showdown Communists Forecast Victory Despite Yeltsin Lead In Polls

Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said Thursday he was confident he will win this weekend’s presidential election, despite polls showing President Boris Yeltsin in the lead.

New violence marred the election campaign - the murders of two regional leaders - although police ruled out political motives in both.

The mayor of a town near Moscow was shot to death in what Yeltsin called a terrorist act meant to intimidate people ahead of Sunday’s vote. A leader of ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party in Siberia also was gunned down.

Yeltsin got an upbeat reception at a rally and concert in St. Petersburg on Thursday, where thousands of mostly young supporters greeted him on Palace Square, waving Russian tricolor flags as the president delivered a forceful speech against his hard-line foes.

“Russia does not need new revolutions,” Yeltsin shouted.

Yeltsin’s fiercest opposition comes from Zyuganov and his revived Communist Party, which aspires to restore the former Soviet Union, its social safety net and greater state control over the economy.

Zyuganov, speaking at a packed news conference, said polls showing Yeltsin with a lead were distorted.

“We are confidently going to the election and one can say we have already won,” Zyuganov declared. “Two-thirds of Russians support our ideals.”

A voluntary restoration of the Soviet Union, he argued, “is not only possible but inevitable.”

Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky denied reports they have forged a coalition. But Zhirinovsky said he will negotiate with Zyuganov after the first round of voting Sunday.

Three of the best-known poll organizations all had Yeltsin clearly ahead of Zyuganov in their most recent surveys, taken in early June and released last weekend.

The Russian Center for Public Opinion and Market Research gave Yeltsin 37 percent of the vote compared to 26 percent for Zyuganov. Nuzgar Betaneli’s Institute for Sociology of Parliamentarism had Yeltsin at 40 percent to 31 percent for Zyuganov, while the Romir Gallup Organization showed Yeltsin winning 34 percent to Zyuganov’s 23 percent.

Grigory Yavlinsky and Alexander Lebed were neck-and-neck for third, just ahead of Zhirinovsky. But Russian polls have consistently understated the support enjoyed by hard-line candidates.

A runoff is required if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote. Yeltsin says he expects a victory in the first round, heightening Communist fears of election fraud.

In a long television interview in Moscow on Thursday, Yeltsin defended his policies in Chechnya. Conceding that it was “probably a mistake” to send troops into the breakaway republic, he said it was the only way to preserve Russia’s integrity.

The mood in the capital was tense after a bomb attack Friday that wounded a candidate for deputy mayor and a subway blast that killed four people and injured 12 Tuesday.

Authorities say the subway explosion was election-related. Yeltsin has blamed it on “reactionary forces.”

On Thursday, police reported the killing of Viktor Mosalov, the mayor of Zhukovsky, 12 miles east of Moscow, but the regional police chief Col. Gen. Alexander Kulikov ruled out a political motive, the Interfax news agency reported.