Yeltsin, who has a history of heart troubles, is reputed to be a heavy drinker and has behaved erratically in public recently. He suffered an exacerbation of cardiac ischemia, a Kremlin statement said.

Such ischemia, better known as coronary heart disease, involves a constriction of the blood supply to the heart.

Although Yeltsin was hospitalized at least once before for heart problems, in 1987, this episode appears to be the most serious health setback for the silver-haired leader since he became Russia’s first elected president in 1991. Political analysts said it could pressure Yeltsin not to seek re-election when his term expires next June.

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Yeltsin was rushed to the Central Clinical Hospital on Tuesday morning after suffering chest pains at home. But by afternoon, aides said that he was conscious and that the pains had passed. Ivan P. Rybkin, chairman of Parliament’s lower house, reported that Yeltsin was in satisfactory condition, and aides insisted that the Russian president will go ahead with a scheduled trip to Norway on July 19.

Western physicians said the Kremlin’s health reports were so vaguely worded as to shed little light on the severity of the Russian president’s condition.

They’re really being coy, said Dr. George R. Goy, an emergency room specialist at the American-run U.S. Global Health clinic in Moscow. Ischemia has a broad range. It means the heart is being deprived of oxygen but gives no clue as to the extent of the problem because the constriction could be partial or complete, he said.

Although traders on global exchanges reacted with alarm to the Russian president’s illness, as a result bolstering the U.S. dollar, in Moscow the streets and stock markets were calm.

The Russian media gave matter-of-fact but terse reports on Yeltsin’s condition. The 8 p.m. newscast on state-owned television devoted only 30 seconds to his hospitalization.

Still, that Yeltsin’s illness was announced promptly indicates that the Soviet tradition of news blackouts in the event of a leader’s illness or death has receded. In the most infamous of all Soviet episodes of such spin control, Russians got their first hint of the 1982 death of long-ailing Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev when state television changed its regular programming without explanation and began running World War II movies and Beethoven concerts. The death was not announced until the following day.

Arkady A. Popov of the Presidential Analytical Center said the announcement within hours that Yeltsin had been hospitalized showed a new candor in the Russian leadership and an understanding that to try to hush up the incident would only backfire with rumors and speculation.

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Nevertheless, speculation aboundedmost of it concerning Yeltsin’s drinking. Yet in a sign of vestigial caution, no Russian journalists spoke the words alcohol or drinking.

Alexander Minkin, a columnist at the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, explained away Yeltsin’s indisposition simply by noting that on Monday there was a birthday party for Sergei A. Filatov, the president’s chief of staff.

Russians are famous for overindulging in birthday toasts.

Yeltsin has Siberian health. He is healthy enough to be able to cry at our funerals, Minkin said. Don’t worry. It is a very temporary problem. The president will be fine tomorrow.