A Parliament of Poets, Pop Stars and Priests

By Kevin Fedarko

As campaign songs go, these lyrics would be, to say the least, original: "Everything has been confused and intertwined." "In our house there are remains from the rotten truth." Nevertheless, Oleg Gazmanov, 42, hopes to woo Russian voters with his soulful music. The hip-swiveling pop star is running for parliament next month on the Russian Democratic Reform Movement ticket and believes his sexy image and chart-topping hits will attract "ordinary people" who otherwise might not vote. "I sing in order to unite people," he says. "I see it as my civic duty to be a candidate."

So do a long list of aspirants, including a movie star, a ballerina, a poet, an Orthodox priest, a dress designer, a 55-year-old grandmother and a former Olympic weight-lifting champ. Not to mention a participant in the aborted coup of 1991 who spent nine months in prison for treason. Russians have no experience in democracy, so it is hardly surprising to see the ballot studded with celebrities who believe their charisma is more important than their political know-how.

This smorgasbord of candidates will confront Russian voters on Dec. 12 in the country's first parliamentary elections without a Czar or communist overlord. It is a landmark the historic import of which is exceeded only by the confusion that surrounds the array of parties elbowing one another for a place at the table. On the same day voters choose their new representatives, they will also pass judgment on a draft constitution that dramatically strengthens the power of the President and opens Boris Yeltsin to the charge that he is less interested in building democracy than in consolidating his own power.

It is a bewildering task, since few Russian voters will be able to decipher from the draft constitution's 66 pages and 137 articles what parliament's role will be, what procedures it will follow, or how the 450 members of its lower house, the Duma, and the 176 delegates of its upper chamber will coordinate with the executive. No one even knows where the Duma will meet, although one proposed site, on the outskirts of Moscow 10 miles from the Kremlin, suggests the importance the new parliament will command in Yeltsin's estimation.

The result is a cacophonous mix of candidates bumping up against one another in improbable coalitions and alliances, not all of which were able to collect the 100,000 signatures necessary to qualify for the ballot. One of the more exotic hybrids was formed by Lyudmila Vartazarova, a grandmother of four whose strategy involved merging her Socialist Party of the Working People, based in Moscow, with a group of Cossack monarchists from the south, a loose coalition of oil executives from western Siberia and a group from the northern republic of Karelia. The resulting clash of ideologies ignited dissent among reform- minded supporters, eventually robbing Vartazarova's Fatherland Alliance of a place on the ballot.

She has plenty of company: more than 35 parties submitted petitions, but 22 were disqualified for failing to garner enough signatures, including the Christian Democrats, a conservative group pushing the candidacy of Yuri Vlasov, a former weightlifting champion in the 1960 Olympic Games who earned the title of the world's strongest man; he now distributes anti-Semitic literature and blames the collapse of the Soviet Union on an international Jewish conspiracy. Also eliminated was the nationalist group backing writer Yuri Bondarev, who once likened Gorbachev's reforms to the German invasion of Stalingrad.

But the final ballot still offers voters a colorful bouquet of choices. The Liberal Democrats are actually an ultranationalist group led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who once promised to reconquer the 14 other former Soviet republics and use some of them as nuclear dumping sites. His platform is only slightly more extreme than the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, whose leader, Gennadi Zyuganov, has promised to wreck the Yeltsin reform program. For support, Zyuganov can look to the Russian Agrarian Party, a conservative rural group whose candidates include Vasili Starodubtsev, one of the leaders of the August 1991 putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev. Arrested at the Moscow airport still carrying a key to the Kremlin office he had appropriated for himself, Starodubtsev spent nine months in jail while supporters raised 68,000 rubles to bail him out. He claims he was involved in the failed coup "by chance."

Among the 44 candidates from the Women of Russia alliance are actress Natalya Gundareva, 45, the grande dame of Russian stage and screen who says that the roles she has played over the years -- wife of a deceived husband, director of a children's home, a string of aristocratic ladies -- enable her to understand people from all walks of life. "If actors want to make life better," Gundareva explains, "they can do this better than any economist, journalist or politician."

The most potent of the blocs -- Yeltsin hopes -- is Russia's Choice, a group of high-profile government officials led by Yegor Gaidar, Economics Minister and disciple of "shock therapy" who has served as the spark plug to market reform. The politicians are counting on help from well-known candidates like Iren Andreyeva, 60, a clothing designer who hopes her fashion sensibilities will encourage other legislators to dress more tastefully. "People are attracted by my clothes," she says, "and because of this they listen to what I have to say."

But Russia's Choice is hardly the only reform party. In the absence of a hostile parliament, Yeltsin's supporters have split into several factions. One of the best organized, the Russian Democratic Movement, is led by Moscow's former mayor Gavriil Popov and the popular mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoli Sobchak, who have both clashed with Gaidar. They have given the chest-baring singer Gazmanov a prominent spot on their list. The fragmentation has prompted former presidential adviser Gennadi Burbulis to predict that the splintered democratic movement will produce "a shaky coalition torn by struggle for government posts."

While Russia's Choice, which has more influence over the national media than any other organization, seems likely to win the most seats, the group will probably have to share power with sizable blocs of communists, nationalists and fringe candidates. The plethora of parties does not make it easy for voters to vest authority in a solid majority. And since the campaign will be brief, the winners -- just as in more practiced democracies -- will inevitably be the candidates with the best-known names. Like actresses, pop singers, fashion designers -- and perhaps even the occasional politician.

With reporting by Ann M. Simmons/Moscow