[1][2] The strategy was created under the premise that, in order to defeat nationalists and protofacist candidates in the 1996 election, Yeltsin would need to co-opt their policies.
His aggressive response in Chechnya initiated a highly unpopular war and consequentially had a significantly negative impact on his approval rating.
[1] The campaign strategy had been devised by Oleg Soskovets in response to the defeat of pro-Yeltsin parties in the 1993 and 1995 legislative elections.
[1] Per Soskovet's assessment, Yelstin would need to position himself as an intermediate between the reformers and the Zhirinovsky-style proto-fascists by coopting the platforms of both.
Yeltsin's failure's to cleanly end the Chechen revolt had cost him support amongst the ranks of Russia's more liberal politicians.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta editor Vitaly Tretyakov reported that, in the midst of this military action, perception of Yeltsin's grip on power was so weak that Russia's political elite was anticipating an eventual coup.
In what was seen as a final break between Yeltsin and reformist democrats, he fired three key reformers from his government (Andrei Kozyrev, Sergei Filatov and Anatoly Chubais).
[1][6] His replacement for Kozyrov as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yevgeny Primakov, earned him praise from nationalist figures, including both Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky.
These appointments were angled in accordance with the Soskovets strategy, allowing Yeltsin's administration to achieve a more nationalist image.
[1] As part of the team, Yegorov found himself tasked with the responsibility of coordinating the campaign's collaboration with regional leaders.
[1] Shortly after the aforementioned changes to his administration, Yeltsin ordered the payment of more than $700 million in back-wages to government employees.
[6] In the speech, he also issued harsh condemnation of his government for failing to increase social spending and compensate people's savings from the 1992 price liberalization.
He called for greater protection of Russian enterprises, and announced a new series of measures that would raise import tariffs.
[1] While Yeltsin had not yet completely abandoned the strategy, by January and February 1996 he had already begun to make a course-correction, in many ways moving towards the political center instead of continuing to appease the fringes.
Of ten people who spoke, nine said it was senseless, a lost cause.The group that Saratov had convened concluded that the only way for Yeltsin to win would be if he campaigned as a candidate of reform and stability, and that he would lose if he tried competing for the nationalist and communist vote as Soskovets intended him to.
[1] Sometime before the start of February, Yeltsin asked his daughter Tatyana Dyachenko to sit in on meetings of Soskovets' campaign management team.
[11] Yeltsin's chances were so poorly regarded at the time of the forum, that Zyuganov was greeted by Western leaders and the international media as the presumptive victor of the impending election.
[10][13][14] Upset by the polite reception they witnessed Zyuganov receive,[11] Berezovsky and several key Russian business figures met with each other and agreed that a drastic shift was needed in Yeltsin's campaign strategy.
In late January, Chubais (now working for the aforementioned Semibankirschina shadow campaign team) scheduled a twenty minute meeting with Yeltsin.
[1] Working for the Semibankirschina, Chubais had already assembled a select group of political strategists with whom he started to plan an alternative campaign strategy for Yeltsin.
[1] At the same time, Sergei Filatov (one of the reformists that Yeltsin had earlier fired) began making preparations for a nongovernmental organization that would serve as the united front of political parties and social groups backing the president.
[16] Approximately two weeks after the World Economic Forum, the Semibankirschina team of financiers held a meeting with Yeltsin.
With nearly a month passing with little change, on March 14 Saratov wrote Yeltsin a scathing memorandum decrying that the campaign was still in a state of wreckage.
His influence on the regional leadership has been exercised through vulgar and vain officiousness, which not only compromises you as president but turns off possible allies.
The same methods are being employed, with the same result, with government agencies and with representatives of the mass media and of commercial and banking circles.
The weirdest thing is that Soskovets has not resolved the problem of mobilizing in a short span of time the financial resources needed to wage the campaign.
[11]Yeltsin had begun to consider the advice of Alexander Korzhakov, who urged him to cancel or postpone the election in order to prevent a Communist victory.