Yeltsin Appears Headed for First-Ballot Victory : Russia: The free-market champion is outpolling five others in the federation’s historic presidential race.

MOSCOW —  Boris N. Yeltsin, the radical populist who campaigned for a bold transformation of the Soviet economy on the principles of free enterprise, appeared to have won a solid victory Wednesday as the first elected president of Russia.

Preliminary reports from the cities of European Russia, Siberia and the Soviet Far East showed Yeltsin winning more than 50% of the vote--and often 70%--against his five rivals almost everywhere.

Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, the former Soviet prime minister, was reported running a distant second, averaging about 20% of the votes cast but doing better in many rural areas where the Communist Party had mobilized support among farm workers.

Although a strong vote for Ryzhkov and perhaps other conservative candidates in smaller cities and rural areas could diminish Yeltsin’s margin, the bluff Siberian appeared certain of the absolute majority of more than 50% he needed to win the presidency on the first ballot, avoiding a runoff election.

The likely size of that victory should assure Yeltsin not only the new executive presidency of the Russian Federation, the largest Soviet republic, but also give him the mandate he sought for sweeping political and economic changes in the country as a whole.

Yeltsin’s staff calculated as reports came in through the night that he had received at least 56% of the votes and probably more.

“We believe that, if there were no flagrant violations of the law during the balloting, Boris Yeltsin won about 60% of the vote,” Alexander Krichevsky, the director of Yeltsin’s campaign office, said at dawn today while claiming victory.

In other results, the radical leaders of Moscow and Leningrad, Gavriil Popov and Anatoly A. Sobchak, appeared to have won election over conservative rivals as mayors with greater executive powers, according to the independent Russian Information Agency.

A proposal to change the name of Leningrad back to St. Petersburg reportedly won the approval of 55% of the voters in a non-binding referendum, according to Interfax, another independent news agency, but the ballot counting was not yet complete.

The Communist Party had campaigned hard against the change. The former Russian capital, the city had been renamed in 1924 to honor Vladimir I. Lenin, the Bolshevik revolutionary who founded the Soviet state.

Even from the preliminary reports gathered by the Russian Information Agency and other independent news organizations from across Russia, the size of Yeltsin’s victory was impressive.

In constituencies as diverse as the Soviet navy’s Pacific fleet, fishermen and merchant sailors at sea, mining towns beyond the Arctic Circle, Siberia’s great industrial centers, the ancient cities of European Russia and regions along the Chinese and Mongolian borders, Yeltsin won by margins of 55% to 80%, according to unofficial reports from the Russian Information Agency and Interfax.

Such a victory, demonstrating a strong majority support across the country, should boost Yeltsin’s political stature as a rival to Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and increase his leverage as he pushes not just Russia but the Soviet Union as well into a bolder transformation of its economic system.

Home to half of the Soviet Union’s 290 million people, the Russian Federation holds three-fourths of the country’s oil, gas, coal, gold and diamond deposits, making it the key to both political and economic reforms here.

Yeltsin had campaigned for economic decentralization to end decades of state ownership and government planning, along with the privatization of state enterprises, the distribution of agricultural land to individual farmers and other radical reforms to put the country’s economy on a market basis as quickly as possible.

Ryzhkov, in contrast, had urged a far more cautious transition to what he called a “managed market economy.”

“Social tension is high,” Ryzhkov said as he came to vote, “and if we make drastic decisions that affect people’s lives, there will be unpredictable consequences.”

But Gorbachev, anxious to retain the working relationship he has developed with Yeltsin over the last three months, told reporters as he voted Wednesday morning that he is “ready to cooperate with anyone who will be elected by the Russians--there will be no problems from my side.”

The vote, held on the first anniversary of Russia’s “declaration of sovereignty,” drew more than 75% of the 105 million eligible voters after a three-week campaign by Yeltsin, who ran virtually as an incumbent as chairman of the Russian Parliament, and his five rivals.

Even before the polls closed in Moscow and Leningrad, results from the Soviet Far East, 10 time zones away, showed Yeltsin virtually sweeping the region, receiving 69% of the votes in Vladivostok, more than 60% in three neighboring cities, 54% in Magadan, 63% in Khabarovsk and 59% in Chita.

Initial returns from cities in European Russia--Saratov, Penza, Novgorod, Voronezh, Kursk, Stavropol and Samara--showed Yeltsin capturing 65% to 80% of the vote.

With counting of the paper ballots still under way in Moscow at dawn, Yeltsin appeared to have won about 70% of the vote in the capital, the Russian Information Agency reported.

But Yeltsin ran poorly in some rural areas where traditionally conservative farmers have reacted with suspicion and skepticism to his calls for the breakup of the big state and collective farms.

In the southern region of Stavropol, where Gorbachev worked for many years as a party official, Yeltsin won 65% of the urban vote, but only 35% of the rural.

Besides Yeltsin and Ryzhkov, the candidates were Vadim V. Bakatin, an adviser to Gorbachev and a former interior minister; Col. Gen. Albert M. Makashov, a regional military commander; Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, head of the small Liberal Democratic Party, and Aman-Geldy Tuleyev, a regional official in the Siberian coal fields.