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Yeltsin comes home to announce future

"He did a very good job here, and his wife used to stand right next to us in line for shoes," says Zoya Kartashova, a tiny pensioner in fur boots and a thin purple jacket who was walking home on a crisp cold day.

"Now I actually feel sorry for him. He's alone there and doesn't know how life really is for people. ... I voted for him last time, but that's it."

Yeltsin, 65, is expected to announced today that he will seek a second presidential term. He trails in nationwide opinion polls and appears to fare only slightly better in his own backyard.

"It's a difficult decision," Yeltsin told reporters at Yekaterinburg's airport, referring to the decision whether to run in the June 16 election.

"It would not mean that I will necessarily be elected," he said. "But we must continue with reforms. We don't have any other choice. There is no road back, and we must finish what we have started."

Russia's provinces have been the last to feel benefits from market reforms, and voters there flocked to the Communists and other opposition parties in December parliamentary elections.

Yeltsin's trip to Yekaterinburg (yeh-kah-teh-REEN-burg), a city of 2 million people, is the first of what his office says will be many visits to Russia's regions.

The Ural Mountains city, formerly known as Sverdlovsk, was at the heart of the Soviet Union's military-industrial complex. It is ailing now as Russian industry declines and the military shrinks.

The city, home to the giant Uralmash machine-building plant, also is known for violent feuds between organized crime gangs. Its workers face constant delays in their paychecks in addition to production declines and environmental and health problems.

Yeltsin last visited Yekaterinburg in June 1992, when his mother was ill. He had been the region's Communist Party boss before moving to Moscow in 1985.

During his current trip, he is sticking to a fairly conventional schedule, visiting a factory, a subway station, a war memorial and a cemetery, among other stops.

At Sreduralstroi, a huge construction company that Yeltsin ran before going into politics, the past seven years have been rough. The number of projects is down by a third, said deputy director Konstantin Yeliseyev.

Yeliseyev, who worked with Yeltsin, said he sympathizes with the job the president faces "rebuilding an entire economy for 150 million people."

"But it could have been done more gently," he said. "Boris Nikolayevich's character is very tough."

Besides the economy, Yeltsin is widely condemned for the bloody war in Chechnya and the 1993 battle at Russia's parliament, when Yeltsin called in tanks to put down an armed opposition rebellion.

Many Russians also worry about his health, noting his two lengthy convalescences for heart trouble and comparing him to aging Soviet leaders who, despite their power, became laughing stocks.

The strongest point in Yeltsin's favor seems to be the perceived lack of other viable, moderate or reformist candidates. Several Yekaterinburg residents said they don't like the president but might feel compelled to vote for him to stop a candidate like ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

"I would vote for him (Yeltsin) so there could be some calm. Otherwise, things will be shaken up all over again," said Yuri Bezrukov, 56, one of a crew clearing a street already lined by waist-high piles of snow.