The Worrisome Shape of the New Duma : Early election returns are not so good for Yeltsin; is mood of Russian public souring?

Partial results from Sunday’s legislative elections in Russia are not good news either for President Boris N. Yeltsin, who could end up facing a new Parliament no less obstructionist than the one it replaces, or for hopes that grass-roots support for democracy has indeed taken hold in a country with a long authoritarian tradition.

The big winners in an election that was ignored by almost half of all voters could be extreme nationalists and Communists, who seem poised to become a significant minority in the 450-seat Duma, the lower house of Parliament. When seats won by smaller hard-line parties like the Russian Agrarian Party and Women of Russia are added in, Yeltsin’s opponents might in fact be a majority.

The major surprise and the biggest shock was the showing of the wildly misnamed Liberal Democratic Party, whose program is unmistakably fascistic and chauvinistically expansionist. Its leader, a charismatic demagogue named Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, immediately becomes the second most powerful political figure in Russia and, because of the anxiety he provokes in neighboring states, a major international concern as well.

Among other things, Zhirinovsky would re-create a unitary Russian empire within the boundaries of the Soviet Union or even “the borders of 1900,” which would include Poland and Finland. He favors resuming the full-scale production and unhindered export of weapons, and strengthening Russia’s ties with such former client states as Iraq and Syria. Among his most popular promises is to make cheap vodka available to Russians on virtually every street corner.

Disorganization among democratic candidates helped the showing made by the reactionary parties. Russia’s moderates, not for the first time in that country’s history, worked against their own interests by competing with each other in more than 100 electoral districts, splitting the vote to the advantage of the extremist candidates. Yeltsin himself chose to stand above the parliamentary battle. His key concern was winning ratification of a new constitution that gives the president greater and clearer powers and individuals better-protected rights. That has been achieved, which is to be welcomed, but the new basic charter is no guarantee of a smoother legislative path for the economic and institutional changes that Russia so badly needs.

Like Europe, Washington has good reason to be concerned about the apparent strength shown by the anti-democratic parties and what that might bode. All hopes for a more cooperative post-Cold War era rest on Russia moving steadily toward democracy at home and behaving responsibly abroad. Zhirinovsky typifies the antithesis of those hopes. Is he an anomaly, or does he represent Russia’s true political mood?