Ever since he was brought by Mikhail Gorbachev into the Soviet Politburo in December 1985, no Soviet political figure has been as irreverently outspoken about Soviet life or as ambitious to change it as Boris Yeltsin, 58, a heavyset, 6-ft. 2-in. man from Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains. Appointed to clean up the corrupt Moscow party committee, he quickly fired hundreds of bureaucrats and barnstormed the city, criticizing food shortages and general incompetence. But his reforming zeal and a bitter public debate with Politburo conservative Yegor Ligachev led to his public censure and ouster from the Moscow party position in November 1987.
But Yeltsin has refused to disappear. Banished to a deputy-ministry position in the construction industry, he is now attempting the unheard-of in Soviet life: a political comeback. Widely popular on the streets of Moscow, Yeltsin has got himself chosen as one of two candidates in the March 26 nationwide runoff for the brand-new Congress of People's Deputies. Today he campaigns daily around the city, exciting cheering crowds and recruiting campaign workers at every stop. He interrupted the frenzy of his quest and granted an interview in his Moscow office with TIME Washington correspondent David Aikman.
Q. You are running for election in the Moscow district as if your life depended on it. Why does winning it mean so much to you?
A. My candidacy was proposed by several hundred organizations in 50 different constituencies around the Soviet Union. But the Moscow constituency is the Moscow constituency. An elected representative will find it easier to deal with issues if he has been elected by this particular constituency, constituency No. 1 in Moscow.
And during the dramatic events of the fall of 1987, I was accused of not being acceptable to Muscovites. I think it is now objectively possible to find out whether this is the case.
Q. Why is this so important to you?
A. Why? If you were mugged on the street and robbed of your jacket, it would also be important to you that your robber was identified and captured.
Q. If you get elected as a representative for Moscow, how will you view your role?
A. It will be one thing if I am just a representative at the Congress and quite another if I am in the permanent Supreme Soviet as a sort of professional politician -- to use your vocabulary, though we don't have such terminology -- in which case my functions will be different and ought to be looked at differently. As to actually becoming a member of the Supreme Soviet, I don't rate my chances very high.
Q. Why not?
A. As I see it, the people who make the proposals are not very enthusiastic about it.
Q. Who, for example?
A. The political leadership.
Q. Why is the political leadership opposed to you?
A. You can't explicitly call it opposition. I give full support to the general direction of perestroika, to the country's foreign policy and so on. But I have my own views on matters of political tactics that differ slightly from , the position of the official leadership. In this respect, there is a certain tension in our relationship, but I insist on certain limits to it.
Q. Should the President of the Soviet Union be chosen by a direct, popular vote?