In a speech in the provincial centre of Oryol, 250 miles from Moscow, two days ago, President Yeltsin was more optimistic about his country's future than at any time since he became President of an independent Russia almost six years ago. Borrowing from the International Monetary Fund would end in 1999, inflation had been reduced to manageable proportions and the rouble's value had stabilised, he said.
There are those, however, who believe that not everything in Russia's garden is rosy. Moves behind the scenes indicate that the campaign to replace Mr Yeltsin has already begun. Moscow's popular if egotistical mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov, has already made the traditional statement of initial interest in the presidency by announcing that he is "not a candidate"; the communist leader, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, is keeping up the pressure; and on Thursday, the redoubtable Gen Alexander Lebed offered to join forces with another disillusioned solder, Gen Lev Rokhlin, who has announced his intention of leaving the pro-Yeltsin faction in parliament and founding his own group.
The attention of Moscow's "chattering classes", however, is focused on a third general whose book appears to lift the veil of secrecy over the activities of the President and his entourage. Gen Alexander Korzhakov's oeuvre, Boris Yeltsin: From Dawn to Dusk, is making its own minor contribution to inflation by rising in price from 55,000 to more than 100,000 roubles (£12) in the impromptu bookstalls in the city's pedestrian underpasses. Gen Korzhakov is not a military man but gained his senior rank in a much more shadowy organisation called the Committee of State Security, known throughout the world by its Russian-language initials: KGB.
He has been described by many in the West as Mr Yeltsin's "bodyguard" but this is hardly accurate. He was, until fired by Mr Yeltsin, the head of a corps of presidential guards which numbered more than 16,000. He was also a close friend of Mr Yeltsin and his family, as evidenced by the extraordinary series of unflattering pictures of the President interspersed throughout the text. Many in Moscow feel that 100,000 roubles was worthwhile for the photographs alone which show Mr Yeltsin in varying states of undress and distress.
For Irish readers, the chapter on the events at Shannon on September 30th, 1994, is the centre of attraction, but an important "health warning" should be attached. Gen Korzhakov describes bizarre events before Mr Yeltsin ever boarded his aircraft in the US. There was, he states, a breakfast hosted by President Clinton at which the main mistake was to serve wine. Mr Yeltsin hit the vino, according to his former friend, and soon embarrassed his host and the official translator by telling a series of dirty jokes to his cronies. He was then taken, the story goes, while distinctly under the weather, to his presidential plane.
All this, the book says, took place in the Roosevelt Museum near Washington, but the official records of the Ilyushin 62, flight number SDM 9001, show that it flew from Seattle directly to Shannon without touching down in Washington DC.
The most striking claim, by Gen Korzhakov, is that, under the influence of drink, Mr Yeltsin had either a heart attack or a minor stroke on the aircraft about three hours out from Shannon and that this was the reason for his non-appearance. But can we believe the general?
His former employers in the Lubyanka were never great believers in the truth. He already appears to have got it wrong about the location of the tipsy breakfast and his description of Russia's first deputy prime minister, Mr Oleg Soskovets, and the Taoiseach, Mr Albert Reynolds, drinking pints of Guinness together after their Shannon talks is obviously false as Mr Reynolds is a strict teetotaller.
Disinterested observers who saw Mr Yeltsin in Moscow are inclined to believe that he did not suffer a heart attack or a stroke and described him as appearing to suffer from a massive hangover as he railed at his aides and told the waiting media that he had merely overslept.
Gen Korzhakov claims that Mr Yeltsin, despite severe warnings from his doctors, started to drink again almost immediately after his quintuple bypass surgery late last year and hints he is continuing to do so. This latter allegation is believed by many Moscow insiders and is given as the reason why so many prominent politicians are making early presidential noises although an election is not due until 2000.
Even the normally docile media have begun to increase the political pace. The daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, whose owner, Mr Boris Berezovsky, is a member of Mr Yeltsin's cabinet, has savagely attacked the president and first deputy premier, Mr Anatoly Chubais. Two leading TV commentators, on the other hand, have turned their fire on Mayor Luzhkov, accusing him of excessive nationalism and folie de grandeur.
Visitors to Moscow, impressed by improvements in the city's appearance and the air of increasing prosperity, have been inclined to judge Mr Chubais's reform programme as a success and regard him as a possible future president. But most Russians, who feel he privatised state industries into the hands of his friends, dislike Mr Chubais. He is, not surprisingly, detested by the communists on that score but I doubt if anyone hates him with as much venom as Mr Luzhkov, who wastes no opportunity to point out that Moscow's relative prosperity stems from the fact that it opted out of the Chubais reform programme and ran its own show.
It is against this background of conspiracy, hostility and personal bitterness that Mr Yeltsin has been making his optimistic economic noises and even these have been contradicted in private by his own ministers, one of whom predicts zero growth and 30 per cent unemployment by year's end. As usual in Russia, it is a matter of deciding who to believe.
