Yeltsin invaded Chechnya in part to recoup political authority. It proved instead to be an unmitigated disaster. One year later, the parliamentary elections of December 1995 yielded a Duma that was even more dominated by radical nationalists and communists than the earlier one had been. Yeltsin's popularity plummeted to unprecedented lows: the percentage of respondents (in a public opinion poll of January 1996) who would have chosen him that day for president was in the low single digits. Presidential elections loomed in June 1996, and it remained unclear whether Yeltsin could recoup his authority with the electorate sufficiently to prevail in that election.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS OF 1996

Yeltsin had to decide what posture to strike in the presidential election campaign. Should he try to co-opt the constituents of his opponents by running on a patriotic, hardline platform? Or should he try to differentiate himself from his opponents by mobilizing moderate and anti-communist constituencies? Initially, Yeltsin was inclined to run on a nationalistic platform as defender of the integrity of the Russian state and nation. In March 1996, however, new advisors persuaded him to switch course. He replaced his old advisory team and decided to present himself as the candidate of peace, order, stability, and progress. He decided to depict his main opponent in the election, Gennadii Ziuganov, as a totalitarian restorationist and himself as the savior of the nation from a return to Stalinism.