4 Parties to Split Pro-Yeltsin Vote : Russia: Division doesn’t diminish president’s chances of a majority. But reformers may be disorganized.

Sergei M. Shakhrai, a 37-year-old deputy prime minister, wants Russian voters to know that he lives with his wife and two children in a four-room suburban cottage with “no saunas, cooks or maids” and shares his only car, a Volga sedan, with his in-laws.

His recent disclosure of income (a $115 monthly salary, nothing more) and modest lifestyle (not even a personal computer to his name) is rare for an official here.

But then, much is unexpected about the first election in Russia not being run by a czar or a Communist Party boss.

Not the least is Shakhrai’s decision to launch a new party, splitting President Boris N. Yeltsin’s Cabinet into rival camps.

Shakhrai’s claim of personal austerity is just one way he distances himself from a government tainted by corruption and falling living standards.

The rift opened last month as soon as Yeltsin forcibly shut down the Soviet-era Parliament that opposed his free-market goals.

Now four pro-Yeltsin parties, driven by the personal ambition of their leaders and differing approaches to reform, are among the 13 that qualified Wednesday to run for the new Parliament on Dec. 12.

While this does not necessarily diminish Yeltsin’s odds of achieving the legislative majority that has eluded him, it does indicate that reformers might be too divided and disorganized to dominate the Parliament even if they win most of the seats.

“We may end up with an extremely mixed and disunited Parliament, consisting of small pressure groups that are promoting particular interests and are basically not responsible for the fate of the country,” said Economy Minister Yegor T. Gaidar, who leads the dominant pro-Yeltsin party, Russia’s Choice.

With high-profile support in the Cabinet and a favorable spin on state television, Russia’s Choice has all the advantages of incumbency--except Yeltsin’s explicit endorsement.

The president’s neutrality has prompted other reformers to enter the race on their own, along with a full spectrum of Communists, fascists, industrialists, farm workers, ecologists and feminists vying for 450 seats in the State Duma and 176 in the Federation Council.

Shakhrai, a Moscow politico with roots in the heartland, has staked out a position as champion of Russia’s far-flung provinces. His Party of Russian Unity and Accord favors greater autonomy for them than Yeltsin would allow and a slower approach to reform than Gaidar’s “shock therapy.”

“We look at all economic problems through the prism of uniting the country,” Shakhrai told reporters Thursday.

His cause attracts strange bedfellows, among them Ramazan G. Abdulatipov, one of the last holdouts in the old Parliament before the army stormed it Oct. 4, and Deputy Prime Minister Alexander N. Shokhin.

Even Communists regard Shakhrai as moderate enough to be a possible ally, while some in Gaidar’s camp refer to him privately as “the enemy.”

If the Yeltsin forces are in disarray, the hard-line opposition is crippled.

Several anti-Yeltsin parties were banned Oct. 3, then allowed two weeks later to enter a campaign already under way. Among those, the Communists submitted the required 100,000 signatures of support by last Saturday’s deadline, but the Russian National Union, led by nationalist firebrand Sergei N. Baburin, fell about 19,000 short.

Baburin claimed that police raided his headquarters and seized petitions containing 22,000 names.

“We have certain information that there is a certain list of politicians who should not (be allowed to) stand,” he said Thursday.

The Central Elections Commission barred his party from the ballot pending an investigation.

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Twenty-one other parties from both camps failed to get 100,000 signatures, so they are barred from competing for the 225 Duma seats that will be apportioned according to nationwide vote tallies. But they may run in local districts for other seats if enough voters sign their petitions by Monday.

“Our strongest desire is to boycott this hastily concocted procedure,” Communist leader Gennady A. Zyuganov said. “But if we do, it will create the illusion of unanimous elections (of Yeltsin supporters). Our task is not to allow this dictatorship to legalize itself.”

The hard-liners’ prospects have improved with the rise of the Agrarian Party, which groups collective farm workers opposed to the president’s recent decree allowing sale of land.

It collected 503,000 signatures, more than twice the number of any other party.

Also weighing against Yeltsin are Russia’s economic hardships, which seem to have grown since he won a nationwide vote of confidence last spring. Gains by former Communists in Poland’s elections two months ago, after initial market reforms, are viewed here as an omen.

“We live in conditions that are worse than a year or two ago,” said Igor A. Kharichev, a Yeltsin political operative. “People don’t look back any further. They blame the democrats.”

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In the scramble for disaffected voters, celebrities and popular causes have been enlisted to overcome the confusion of 13 party names.

The pro-Yeltsin Russian Movement of Democratic Reforms has pop singer Oleg Gazmanov as a candidate. The Democratic Party of Russia, which is critical of Yeltsin, put film director Stanislav S. Govorukhin on the ballot.

There’s also Women of Russia, a party devoted to getting more women into public office, and Cedar, an ecology lobby of business people in search of tax breaks for environmental cleanup.

Some Russians view this election, above all, as a step toward a “civil society”--a democratic system in which politicians are accountable to grass-roots interests. Others see it as a prescription for more gridlock.

“Russian parties are minuscule groupings,” political analyst Vladimir Brovkin wrote in the Moscow Times. “They are constantly bickering, splitting, uniting and inventing new names and switching sides. It is unclear whether unity even within Russia’s Choice will outlast the December elections.”

Fur Hats in the Ring

Here are the 13 parties that have qualified for Russia’s parliamentary elections Dec. 12 and their leaders:

PRO-YELTSIN REFORMERS Russia’s Choice--Economy Minister Yegor T. Gaidar Party of Russian Unity and Accord--Deputy Prime Minister Sergei M. Shakhrai Yavlinsky-Boldyrev-Lukin Bloc--Grigory Yavlinksy, a former economic adviser to Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev Russian Movement of Democratic Reforms--St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak

CENTRISTS and GRASS-ROOTS MOVEMENTS Civic Union--Arkady Volsky Democratic Party of Russia--Nikolai Travkin Women of Russia--Alevtina Fedulova Constructive Ecology Movement of Russia (Cedar)--Anatoly Panfilov Dignity and Charity Movement--Nikolai Gubenko Future of Russia--New Names--Vyacheslav V. Lashchevsky

OPPOSITION Communist Party--Gennady A. Zyuganov Liberal Democratic Party--Vladimir Zhirinovsky Agrarian Party--Mikhail Lapshin