RUSSIA’S CHILLING CHOICES

In this frozen corner of western Siberia, they say swans winter only where the people are good.

So in this winter of mounting debt and political anxiety, when Russians’ lives have been complicated by the prospect of making tough electoral choices, the hardy, generous folk on nearby collective farms have been heartened by the arrival of a huge flock of the noble birds.

The 128 swans--more than in recent memory--flew from the tundra to winter on a pristine lake whose underground source keeps it from freezing, even in the most bitter chill. No matter how hard-pressed, farmers feed the swans tons of precious grain to keep them from starving.

The snowy-colored adults and dirty-gray cygnets circled on the misty lake fringed by frost-coated birch trees, as Mikhail I. Lapshin campaigned last week in his hometown.

Lapshin--whose Agrarian Party appears headed for an impressive showing in the farm belt when voters go to the polls Sunday to choose a new Russian legislature--sped past the lake to stump at collective farms that raise wheat, dairy cows, cattle and trout.

The party is made up mainly of collective farm directors and rural officials who embrace traditional Communist attitudes toward land use but shun the discredited Communist Party label.

Agrarians hope to capture the heartland, home to 40 million of Russia’s 150 million citizens, many of whom see their way of life threatened by President Boris N. Yeltsin’s reforms.

“Nobody else is even promising to help the countryside,” said Sergei A. Rtishev, a game warden. “The Agrarians are at least promising to help, though who knows what they can do.”

Of 13 parties vying for seats in the new legislature, only six are on the ballot in Altai.

Russia’s Choice, the only party that has endorsed Yeltsin, seems invisible even in the regional capital, Barnaul, 2,000 miles from Moscow.

On the collective farms of Sovietskoe, 125 miles farther out on the steppe, even the few voters who were democratically inclined could not name a local candidate for Russia’s Choice or the three other parties favoring Western-style free-market reforms.

The Communist Party is not on the ballot here. Most former party functionaries and almost all the influential managers of large collective farms are backing the Agrarians.

“The democrats are trying hard, but the Agrarians have all the old party people,” said Alexander I. Balakhnin, 44, head of construction for the Harvest collective farm in Sovietskoe.

The Agrarian Party opposes dismantling the Soviet system of collective farming. It especially opposes Yeltsin’s October decree allowing land to be bought and sold freely.

Lapshin would bar sales of farm land to anyone other than farmers. He calls for state regulation of land sales to prevent individuals from amassing large tracts to be farmed by hired labor--which he argues would lead to modern serfdom. The Agrarians want more agricultural subsidies, food price controls and a gradual shift over a decade to a free-market system.

Lapshin is also campaigning against Yeltsin’s constitution, implying that it would break up collectives and force farmers off the land to fend for themselves.

“This is a constitution that allows only one form of ownership--private ownership,” he said. “This is a constitution that allows land speculation.”

In Sovietskoe--a town called “Muddy” until Soviet bureaucrats renamed it in 1960--turnout for his campaigning was low; many predict that voters may stay home in record numbers.

But for those who came, Lapshin seemed to tap a deep rural discontent, anxiety about the future and anti-Yeltsin sentiment.

The government’s biggest political liability is its debt.

Russia owes Altai farmers at least $47 million, said Pyotr M. Prigon, Altai’s representative to Moscow.

Russian Finance Ministry officials called these figures inflated, saying the government owes $40 million to Altai and only $800 million nationwide.

Agrarian Party officials claim that the total debt to Russian peasants is $2.4 billion. Some collective farmers said they have not received full state salaries since August.

This year, Russian officials required collective farms to sell at least 40% of their yield to the government. That is less than in Soviet times, but farmers complained that the state-set prices were artificially low.

The government collected the grain, meat, milk and vegetables but has not paid for them; farmers know that with each passing month, inflation cuts the value of the state IOUs by 25%.

Nikolai I. Penkin, 44, a Harvest manager, said the government is trying to make farmers pay inflation’s toll, while blaming agricultural subsidies for bloating the national deficit.

“We don’t want anything from the government except the money we’ve earned,” said Penkin, who plans to vote Agrarian and noted that the party’s candidates are familiar faces who worked their way up through the collective farms and understand farmers’ problems.

But several collective workers said they were still undecided and might stay home Sunday.

“There is nobody to trust,” said Ludmilla, 36, who declined to give her last name.

The Harvest collective was reorganized in an earlier reform, and now each of its 560 workers owns a share of the operation--which, in theory, can be sold, traded or inherited.

In practice, there are no buyers.

Like most collectivists, the Balakhnins survive on back yard industries.

They have two cows, five pigs, a dozen chickens and a basement full of vegetables that Tatanya Balakhina canned last summer.

“We survived the Mongols for 300 years, we’ll survive this,” Alexander Balakhnin said.

RUSSIA’S CHILLING CHOICES

Voters go to the polls Sunday to say whether they support President Boris N. Yeltsin’s proposed constitution. They also will pick lawmakers to help govern the nation. With the election hours away, campaigning from Moscow, left, to Siberia, below, has not yet really fire up. But cold realities confront voters as they make up their minds.

THE LEGISLATIVE VOTE

Voters will choose a two-chamber Federal Assembly. The upper house, the Federation Council, consists of 178 seats, two for each of Russia’s 78 regions and ethnic republics. Chechnya refused to participate in the election and Tatarstan and Chelyabinsk failed to put forward the required minimum of three candidates. Each voters in the other regions or republics will vote for two candidates on the list. The lower house, or Duma, consists of 450 seats. Half the seats will be chosen from nationwide lists offered by each party. Voters will check off the party of their choice; seats will be divided according to the proportion of the nationwide vote received by each party getting at least 5% of the vote. The rest of the Duma will be chosen from 225 voting districts.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL VOTE

Yeltsin has submitted a document that outlines his vision of the way the nation should be governed. It envisions a strong central government with a powerful presidency--elements that concern many Yeltsin opponents. The old Soviet constitution gave Parliament supreme power, and it used that power to slow down Yeltsin’s free-market reforms. He dissolved the Parliament last September, called the new elections and sent army tanks to crush an October revolt.

GRIM REALITIES:

Unemployment is soaring . . .

1991: 61,000

1992: 577,700

October, 1993: 728,400

These are official figures. Estimates of the number of people in 86.7 million work force who are actually out of jobs range from 5 million to 20 million.

. . . while more Russians are fleeing for other countries . . .

1991: 88,281

1992: 102,910

1993: 150,000 (estimated)

. . . and prices (in rubles) run amok.

Commodity Dec. 1991 Jan. 1992 Dec. 1993 Loaf of white bread .60 2.6 235 Quart of milk .62 1.84 365 Sausage 35.5 122.72 2,500 Gallon of gas 1.59 4.54 800 Fifth of vodka 16.6 65 3,000 One-bedroom apartment 15 116 865 Russian-made car 5,000 3 million 8 million

SOURCES: Russian State Statistics Committee, Center for Economic Reform, Interfax, Federal Employment Service, Ministry of the Interior, The Los Angeles Times, Associated Press.