This Time, Boris Gets a Mandate

BORIS YELTSIN CALLED THE RESULTS A "SENSAtion," and he was right in more ways than one. As the embattled Russian President celebrated victory in a nationwide referendum, some 3,000 angry procommunists took to the streets of Moscow Saturday in an unusually violent protest. They clashed with riot police, leaving at least 150 demonstrators and police injured. And while preliminary results gave Yeltsin a 58% vote of confidence and a surprisingly high 53% approval for his economic reforms, political opponents denounced the vote as meaningless; he failed to get the absolute majority of all registered voters needed to force early elections that could replace the conservative parliament.

Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, once Yeltsin's ally, dismissed the referendum as a "sociological poll," and parliament chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov said it had "brought no losers or winners" -- just a weakening of the state. Yeltsin, however, took his victory as a mandate to begin strengthening his political clout. He summoned regional leaders to Moscow to present a new draft constitution that would turn Russia into a presidential republic with a two-chamber parliament to replace the present Congress of People's Deputies.