Soviet Union Heading into the Homestretch

Election rules lead to controversy and occasional setbacks

The corridors of the neoclassical House of Trade Unions building were dark when Boris Yeltsin, 58, Moscow's former Communist Party leader, emerged from a conference room to speak to journalists and admirers waiting in the hall. Yeltsin looked weary but triumphant. "Boris Nikolayevich! How does it feel?" shouted a foreign reporter. "All of Moscow will vote!" Yeltsin beamed. "Can you imagine what that means?"

Only minutes earlier, 886 electors had cast ballots approving Yeltsin's candidacy for city-wide representative to the Congress of People's Deputies, a recently created legislature that Mikhail Gorbachev is counting on to boost his floundering reform drive. Yeltsin's...

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