Documentary : No ‘Photo Ops’ or Jogs for This Candidate : Parliament hopeful Kovalev barnstorms Russia’s heartland the old-fashioned way, without pretension.

The Russian campaign train chugs out past the dingy cement housing blocks that blight the Moscow suburbs, toward the rich farmland of Tambov, where silvery birch trees line the train tracks, and no soot stains the snow.

Inside his steamy compartment, the candidate sits on his bunk eating tangerines, bread and cheese and sipping sugary tea. He keeps a dreamy silence while his friends chat around him.

Even on the campaign trail, Sergei Adamovich Kovalev, Soviet concentration camp veteran and human rights crusader, is taciturn.

To an American political image-maker, candidate Kovalev would be the stuff dreams are made of.

The 63-year-old biologist, an intimate of the late dissident physicist Andrei D. Sakharov, was arrested in 1974 for publishing information about Soviet human rights violations.

He spent seven years in the gulag, then three more in internal exile in the Arctic Far East.

In the hands of a Russian James Carville, this shy hero of the anti-Communist crusade could be “sold” as a man who dared defy the Soviet yoke, paid a heavy price and emerged from prison camp to win a seat in the first Russian Parliament, where he helped lead his country to democracy.

Like U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey, the introverted hero who lost a leg in Vietnam and whose views on military and veterans’ issues were listened to with special respect during his 1992 presidential bid, Kovalev could be marketed as a man with the moral authority to call on his fellow citizens for the courage to stay the course of reform.

But Russia’s fledgling democratic process has yet to produce spin doctors, schedulers or slick TV ads.

For a reporter who has covered American political campaigns, the Russian version is refreshingly free of pomp, pretension and manipulation. The stump speeches are much longer--testament to the legendary Russian patience and the legacy of Soviet ideological indoctrination.

The food is heavier, as the candidates are not obsessed with keeping trim for television. Nobody jogs. And fast-food joints are not among the whistle-stops.

On Kovalev’s campaign, no chartered planes whisk the candidate and his entourage from one “photo op” to the next “media market.” No preppy “advance men” armed with cellular phones keep the candidate on schedule.

No “body man” sees to it that the candidate has a freshly pressed suit and tries to make sure he is not photographed looking disheveled or goofy.

No, Kovalev will travel the 250 miles from Moscow to Tambov by overnight train, spending $7.40 for a “luxury” compartment that sleeps two instead of four.

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He will spend a day barnstorming through the agricultural heartland, taking the pulse of a conservative district where the democrats know they are in trouble. Then Kovalev will try to get some sleep on the overnight train back to Moscow.

He looks tired setting out.

Kovalev was swept into the old Russian Parliament on the anti-Communist wave of 1990, becoming chairman of the Supreme Soviet’s Human Rights Committee.

Now he is running for a seat in the new legislature, or Duma, for Russia’s Choice, the only party that officially supports President Boris N. Yeltsin.

Kovalev is No. 2 on the ticket, after First Deputy Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar.

On the Tambov trip, his entourage is made up of Arseny B. Roginsky, an old friend and wisecracking fellow prison-camp veteran who does most of the talking for Kovalev, as well as providing on-the-spot political strategy and moral support; a fellow candidate, economist Vasily I. Selyunin, whose job is to explain Gaidar’s economic policies to an angry, frightened electorate; two American journalists, and one photographer.

The free press still being a novelty in Russia, the three of us are not viewed as vultures, as has become increasingly common on the U.S. campaign trail. Instead, we are graciously indulged like disruptive but nonetheless welcome guests.

Eventually, we are asked for our impressions and political pointers. For the president’s party seems in fearful disarray.

Kovalev listens without comment while Selyunin reads aloud from a briefing fax on the grim situation in Tambov.

The region has a million voters, more than half of them rural. Most live on collective farms that still bear Leninist names, and sentiment is against Yeltsin’s plan to privatize land.

Tambov’s main industry is defense, which has suffered deep cutbacks. Workers fear that reform will cost them their jobs.

Former Communist Party apparatchiks have new titles but wield the same old power.

The city and regional soviets, or councils, have been dissolved on Yeltsin’s orders--but the head of the local administration promptly reappointed each city council member a “deputy in charge of liaison with the population.”

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Worse, the Tambov democrats have split into two feuding factions, which both claim to represent Russia’s Choice.

Other reformers have defected to the camp of free-market economist Grigory A. Yavlinsky, Gaidar’s most feared rival. And one longtime Yeltsin loyalist has landed in a psychiatric hospital, says the briefing fax.

Kovalev falls asleep to the sound of train wheels cushioned by snow. The conductor wakes him before the late November dawn. There is no hot water with which to wash.

The candidate is met at the train station by Valentin V. Davituliani, Yeltsin’s representative in Tambov, a big, energetic man made even taller by his fur hat.

Kovalev is bundled into an official white Volga and driven off to a cafe, where he sits down with local officials for a staggering breakfast of beet salad, fresh brown bread, apples, cheese, sausages, bacon, juice, pork cutlets, fried potatoes and, for dessert, tea and cream-laden pastry.

Davituliani explains that reform here has been entirely superficial; Communist-era bureaucrats still run the city and regional election commissions, “and their mood is anti-presidential and anti-Gaidar.”

People equate democracy with chaos and impoverishment, he says, and many fault the president for using tanks to crush the October rebellion by hard-line parliamentarians.

“Most of them are not interested in how all this happened and where we are going now,” Davituliani says. “They are interested in today. They have no money. It is tough to support their families. So they are dissatisfied. They do not care about explanations.”

But other local officials tell Kovalev not to read too much into these complaints.

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Tambov residents voiced similar anti-government sentiments before last April’s referendum, but 49.5% still gave Yeltsin a vote of confidence.

Kovalev eats slowly and steadily. His face looks prematurely aged, and his small hands are puffy.

Finally, after everyone else has spoken, the candidate joins in. “Our opponents always say, ‘We are all democrats, we are all for reform--but reform in such a way that people do not suffer,’ ” he remarks.

Davituliani agrees. “And they always say, ‘We’re for a free market--but a free market that doesn’t bring poverty.’ If salaries were high and prices were low, then 100% of the people would be for democracy.”

Soon it is time to move--albeit slowly.

President John F. Kennedy, projecting his image of youth, health and vitality, gave speeches in the coldest weather without an overcoat.

By contrast, Russians believe that to step outside from October onward without a hat is to invite death. If Kovalev’s campaign runs behind schedule, it is not only because he is smothered in hospitality but also because everyone must struggle in and out of heavy coats, scarves and fur hats before and after each whistle-stop.

Kovalev tours a Russian Orthodox church that was used by the Bolsheviks to store grain, then goes to Tambov City Hall, where he addresses an audience of 200 teachers, school administrators and collective farmers.

He stands behind a podium still emblazoned with the hammer and sickle.

Kovalev’s pitch is decidedly anti-populist: He will not make campaign-trail promises his party cannot keep. Russia’s economic crisis began long before the democrats came to power and will not end overnight.

But Kovalev insists that Gaidar and his team do know how to bring down inflation, forge a coherent legal system and create the conditions for economic revival.

Next, economist Selyunin tells the crowd that while living standards plunged 40% in 1992, Russians have not faced the cold and hungry winters that were widely predicted.

The latest statistics show that inflation has begun to fall and that demand for food and consumer goods has risen slightly for the first time in 22 months of reform.

And though decontrolled bread prices are rising, Selyunin says, vodka is more affordable than ever.

Under Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the average monthly salary could buy 65 bottles of vodka, he notes. Now, he says, it buys 67.

Voters seem unconvinced.

“I am a little disappointed,” says Nina M. Borodina, a middle-school principal. “I would have liked to have heard Gaidar himself.”

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After another gargantuan meal, Kovalev and company give a repeat performance at the Plastmass defense plant. Its 6,000 workers produce weapons along with linoleum and other plastics, and their paychecks are late.

The auditorium is hot and stuffy, the audience hostile. Kovalev, whose habitual dreamy expression gives the impression that he is only half present, seems to drift further and further away. Finally, he nods off.

Roginsky sends a messenger to the stage with a note.

“Don’t sleep!” it says. Kovalev snaps to.

All this is lost on the audience, however. Though Kovalev has been urged to say a few words about himself, the shy dissident speaks only about his party platform. His campaign is apparently too disorganized to introduce him properly.

At the end of the long day, many of the voters have no idea that the kindly but faded-looking man who has asked them not to lose faith in democracy is a hero of the anti-Communist movement.

“I’ve never heard of him,” says Lidia V. Yefremova, 50, who says she will probably vote against Russia’s Choice. “He seems like a person from the past.”

A few local journalists attend Kovalev’s speeches, but he is not trailed by television cameras, nor does he give the kind of exclusive interviews that U.S. politicians know will guarantee them a big spread in small-town newspapers.

“Unfortunately, we are now poorly organized,” Kovalev says.

He acknowledges that more than half the audience in the Plastmass auditorium will vote against Russia’s Choice or stay away from the polls. Up to a third may support the Communists.

“I understand perfectly that there is irritation among the voters,” Kovalev adds. “It’s natural.”

He knows he did not change many votes today. But he is not discouraged.

For him, Russia has no choice but to go forward.

“These elections will not be perfect,” he says. “There is very little time to campaign. . . . And we do not have a real political tradition in this country.”

The candidate struggles back into his heavy coat and fur hat and walks slowly back out into the snow to catch the night train back to Moscow.