Yeltsin Will Seek Presidency of Russian Republic

MOSCOW — Boris N. Yeltsin announced Monday that he will run for president of the Soviet Union’s largest republic but said that he expects strong opposition from his own Communist Party.

Yeltsin, who won more than 5 million votes in last year’s Moscow elections with his anti-Establishment stance and calls for more radical reforms, made the announcement to several hundred people who gathered to view a new film on his life.

Yeltsin was dumped from his job as Moscow party chief in late 1987 for his outspoken criticism of the reforms of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He was later given a state post in construction with the rank of minister.

The 58-year-old populist, a former engineer, took advantage of the occasion Monday to take several swipes at Gorbachev.

He accused Gorbachev of being “in a state of panic” and said the president has “lost control of himself and lost political control of the country.”

The president of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic is elected by the Congress of the Russian Federation, scheduled to open Wednesday, and not the general electorate.

Yeltsin said he expects his main opponent for the post to be Alexander V. Vlasov, 58, a non-voting member of the Communist Party’s Politburo and prime minister of the Russian republic.