THE RUSSIAN Communist leader, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, the pollsters' favourite to win Russia's presidential election in June, said yesterday he was asking other candidates to help him take over from President Yeltsin.
The former teacher, who once studied Marxism Leninism but projects himself as a moderate, pledged to banish poverty if Russians elected him president on June 16th.
To help him in what he says is a quest to install a fair government and recreate the Soviet Union on a voluntary basis, Mr Zyuganov told a news conference he planned to convince a string of politicians, including other presidential hopefuls, to support him.
He said he would meet Gen Alexander Lebed, the former vice president, Mr Alexander Rutskoi, and the eye surgeon, Mr Svyatoslav Fyodorov, to urge them to join his left wing alliance, which already includes more than 20 hard line groups, in backing him.
"We think that what is extremely important for us now is to hold further talks with the centre and centre right, he said.
Mr Rutskoi led a 1993 mutiny which Mr Yeltsin put down with tanks. Mr Fyodorov heads the centrist Workers Self Government Party and Mr Lebed's Congress of Russian Communities just failed to win seats in last December's parliamentary election.
Mr Viktor Anpilov, who leads the orthodox communist Working Russia movement, was studying a document to reconsider whether he would endorse Mr Zyuganov as sole candidate, Mr Zyuganov said. Working Russia also narrowly failed to win seats in December.
Speaking on the 43rd anniversary of the death of the Soviet communist dictator, Josef Stalin, Mr Zyuganov dismissed fears of some Russians that if he came to power it could cause bloodshed.
He said it was Mr Yeltsin's government that was risking unrest in Russia by not paying wages on time. "Those are the kind of politics that lead to war," he said.
He said the war in Chechnya must be solved without the army.
Referring to a list of seven solutions Mr Yeltsin has said he is considering for the politically damaging Chechnya, Mr Zyuganov said "I don't think he could hold seven ideas in his head at once."
Phil Reeves adds from Moscow:
Whatever other delights it has in store for the world, the Russian presidential election looks as if it will be lacking in one vital element.
There will be no BBC Jeremy Paxman or Robin Day, no national television taskmaster ready to whip out his rapier at the merest whiff of a lying politician.
Anyone who tries such tactics faces being banned from the air a waves, at least on the government run networks.
The central election commission is putting the finishing touches to rules which while restraining journalists from, openly supporting individual politicians also bar those who chair TV debates from asking the candidates questions. In fact, they would not even be allowed to interrupt.
Anyone unable to control the urge to butt in will run the risk of professional suicide they could be suspended from work, or even fired. "Journalists would simply be made into microphone holders, and nothing more," said Mr Pavel Kutepov, of the Russian Union of Journalists. "It would be impossible for, them to fulfil their duties.
The freedom of the media is fast becoming a prominent issue in the June election. The fact that the commission's regulations would apply only to state run television and radio and three government funded national newspapers impresses no one. The government controls ORT and RTR, the top two TV stations, and the only channels with blanket coverage across the nation.
The commission was yesterday unwilling to comment publicly, pointing out that the rules were, still only in draft form. But it has been quietly spreading word that they are intended to prevent the government owned media from being pressurised into supporting President Yeltsin, thus safeguarding the interests of his opponents. This may be disingenuous the rules would also muzzle criticism of the government.
When Mr Yeltsin launched his campaign last month he placed press freedom high on his list of achievements. But journalists have not forgotten that one of his first acts during his stand off with parliament in 1993 which led to the shelling of the White House was to close down the opposition newspaper, Rossiskaya Gazeta, and to censor television. They also point out that journalists are physically attacked with alarming frequency.
The conflict in Chechnya has brought out the Kremlin's worst instincts. Last month Mr Yeltsin fired Mr Oleg Poptsov, the independently minded head of RTR, accusing the station of broadcasting "lies" and of "morbid" coverage of Chechnya. It transpired that it was being penalised for having the temerity to show pictures of victims.