UNHEALTHY PROGNOSIS

NOT ONLY FOR BORIS YELTSIN BUT FOR RUSSIA'S STABILITY AS A POLITICAL WAR OF SUCCESSION BREWS

With any luck, advisers to Russian President Boris Yeltsin stoically insist, the political paralysis that has gripped Russia since his re-election last July will be over by Christmas: Yeltsin will be back at work after a successful heart-bypass operation, and the country will resume its shamble toward what ordinary Russians wistfully call political "normality." Few believe this will happen, though. Most people, including presidential intimates and senior government officials, suspect that Yeltsin is seriously ill, will require much more than a bypass and may not survive. Last week his prospective surgeon, Renat Akchurin, revealed in press interviews that Yeltsin may have...

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