Russia-Watchers Still in the Dark on Yeltsin’s Health

MOSCOW — This season of lengthening darkness and deepening chill was infamous during the last decade of the Soviet era as the time of the “death watch.”

As aging Communist Party leaders slipped out of the spotlight without a word of explanation, diplomats, correspondents and Kremlinologists kept a vigil for the cryptic clues that a succession at the helm of this erstwhile superpower was under way.

Mournful music on the radio, canceled TV comedies, lights burning late in the party Central Committee building--such were the signals when Soviet leaders Leonid I. Brezhnev, Yuri V. Andropov and Konstantin U. Chernenko died in the depths of winter in the early to mid-1980s.

Yet in this allegedly more enlightened era of reform and media freedom, the true state of the leader’s health is almost as difficult to ascertain as in the dark days of Communist disinformation.

President Boris N. Yeltsin’s aides have sought to assure a jittery outside world that his apparent heart attack Thursday poses no immediate threat to his life.

But those seeking to dispel the atmosphere of uncertainty over who is running Russia concede that they too have no firsthand information.

Overzealous attempts to create an impression that all is in order have backfired, rekindling suspicion over official explanations and causing many to wonder whether silence wasn’t preferable to deception.

State-run TV showed what was apparently file footage of Yeltsin’s plane at Vnukovo Airport shortly after his return to Moscow from a U.S. visit Tuesday. The runway was awash with rainwater in the purported arrival pictures, although Tuesday was dry and clear.

That unexplained effort at subterfuge intensified distrust of the current Kremlin line that the president’s health is in order, coming after a blatant case of disinformation during Yeltsin’s last hospital stay.

In July, the presidential press service issued a photograph of Yeltsin said to show him at work at a desk in his room at Moscow’s Central Clinical Hospital--a picture later proven to be the same shot distributed four months earlier when the he was on vacation in the southern resort of Sochi.

Presidential spokesman Sergei K. Medvedev has issued regular reports on Yeltsin’s condition--even while acknowledging that neither he nor other administration officials are permitted to see him.

The president’s ailment has been described as ischemia, an interruption of the flow of blood to the heart.

Medvedev told journalists Saturday that Yeltsin’s doctor was advising against any contact between the president and his staff.

But “it is not ruled out that urgent papers calling for Yeltsin’s attention will be reaching him,” reported the Interfax news agency, which enjoys closer contact with the presidential security entourage than most other Russian media.

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The official efforts to present the leader’s health as nothing to be overly concerned about have prompted at least one independent newspaper, the feisty daily Moskovsky Komsomolets, to imply that the not-to-worry message may be misleading.

“It looks, like the last time, that we will learn each day about the active work of the president, about the decrees he adopted, the meetings he held, the telegrams he sent,” the newspaper commented in a sarcastic tone. “And rest assured: The president’s security detail will not allow any of the highest state functionaries to play with an ambitious desire to sit in the presidential chair, even for a brief time.”

Moskovsky Komsomolets suggested that the rosy hue cast on Yeltsin’s condition was the work of his influential and shadowy security service. The security detail headed by former KGB official Alexander V. Korzhakov is believed to oppose any transfer of state authority to Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, who is the designated successor to the president should Yeltsin become too ill to serve.

In one of the more impressive attempts to play down concerns, the minister for sports and tourism, Shamil Tarpishchev, told journalists he played a game of tennis with Korzhakov early Friday.

A close associate of both Yeltsin and the security chief, Tarpishchev observed that Korzhakov would hardly have indulged in a sports match “if there was the slightest threat to the life of the president.”