Reformer to Face 3 Communists in Moscow Vote : Soviet Union: Gavriil Popov is favored over party challengers to become the capital’s first popularly elected mayor.

In the first race for a popularly elected mayor of the largest Soviet city, three Communist Party candidates have set out to take control of Moscow away from Gavriil Popov, a leading proponent of radical reform who has been the city’s top official for the last year.

But Popov, the roly-poly head of the City Council, is so confident of victory that he did not even begin campaigning in earnest until Wednesday, a week before the election, when he and the three Communist Party candidates met in a television studio for their first so-called debate.

“Popov is much better known than the rest of the candidates,” said Kiril B. Ignatyev, a member of Popov’s campaign team. “He wanted the voters to get tired of the Communist candidates before he started his campaign.”

Although the Communist Party candidates are unlikely to upset Popov, they could prevent him from winning 50%, which would force the election into a runoff.

“Let’s just say we’re hoping for a second round,” Vladimir V. Kluyev, 54, a factory director who has worked as a Communist Party functionary, said in an interview after a meeting with voters at the Communist Party headquarters in Moscow’s Frunzensky District. Of the four candidates, Kluyev is probably the least known.

Communist Party officials in the district said they will campaign for all the candidates until right before the June 12 election and then endorse the one who has taken the lead. But they admitted that the chance for victory over Popov is slim.

A poll of 3,000 Muscovites by the All-Union Center for the Study of Public Opinion last week found that 42% of those surveyed supported Popov. No other candidate received more than 5%.

But the three Communist Party mayoral candidates said Popov is not suited to be the chief executive officer of the world’s 11th-largest city.

“He’s a theoretician, and the mayor needs to be a doer,” Vitaly T. Saikin, 54, who was a longtime general director of the Zil auto works, said in an interview. “I’ve been a doer my whole life--I haven’t been sitting in an office and working as a theoretician.”

Until last year, the most powerful person in the city was the Communist Party boss, and the second in command was the chairman of the executive committee, a post Saikin held from 1986 to 1990.

Traditionally, the City Council merely rubber-stamped the Communist Party’s decisions. But when the current council was elected in the country’s first democratic local elections in May, 1990, it became the more influential body, and Popov was selected as its leader.

Although liberals hailed Popov’s appointment as a great victory for the reform process, the former economics professor at Moscow State University has been harshly criticized as being unable to implement his ideas.

In response to the criticism, Popov and other liberals said their difficulties were caused by conservatives who sabotaged reforms to make radical democrats appear incapable of running a government.

But Saikin, Kluyev and Alexei M. Bryachikhin, the third Communist Party mayoral candidate, as well as many voters, have not been swayed by that explanation.

“When I was in office, it was bad,” Saikin said in an interview. “But (under Popov) it’s gotten even worse.”

In the last few years, Moscow has been in a steady decline. Food and consumer goods have disappeared from shelves, streets are full of potholes, trash sits uncollected and the city’s residents walk around shaking their heads at all the mess.

“I think the mayor of a city should be better at practical work,” Alexei G. Puchin, a chemist, said at a campaign meeting for Saikin. “This winter, bread disappeared from all of our stores, and Popov needed days to think about how to solve the problem. If Popov had more experience, we would not have a lot of the problems we face today.”

Soviet journalists said Popov is known by the affectionate nickname “Hedgehog in Fog,” after a popular animated cartoon film, because although his ideas seem clear, implementing them is another thing.

But in naming Yuri M. Luzhkov, a longtime city bureaucrat and Communist, as his running mate, Popov indicated that he also understands that “doers” are necessary to run a city whose wobbly economy is still primarily controlled by planners and not market forces of supply and demand.

“We need to use the personnel available now in our country--including the staff from the old Communist apparat, “ Popov, 54, told the TV viewers. “Luzhkov, in my opinion, effectively compensates for a lot of my shortcomings. He’s worked for this city for many years and knows it very well.”

During Wednesday’s televised “debate,” candidates neither challenged each other nor argued. They simply answered questions that viewers had called or sent to the station. When Bryachikhin, a member of the Politburo of the Russian Communist Party, was asked for his criticism of Popov, he refused to say anything negative and instead commented on how well they work together.

In general, meetings between the candidates and voters were poorly attended. Popov could not pack a small auditorium at Moscow State University. About 75 people attended Kluyev’s meeting in the Frunzensky District although the hall held 10 times that number.

“Everyone is tired of elections,” Yuri D. Voskoboinikov, 53, an engineer, said at the Kluyev campaign meeting. “The only reason I came here was out of responsibility as a Communist.”

Representatives of Popov’s campaign said they will not start their big drive to distribute leaflets, post flyers and mail campaign literature until this weekend.