No matter the outcome of Boris Yeltsin's coming heart surgery, uncertainty about his ability to serve out his second term has jump-started planning and plotting to succeed him. On Saturday, his security adviser, Aleksandr Lebed, called for the President to step down until he has recovered.

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Reprinted as "Pre-election Maneuvers for a Yeltsin Succession," in International Herald Tribune, October 2, 1996; and "What Crisis?" in Hoover Digest, No. 1 (1997), pp.78-80.