Russia Foes Square Off in Game of Political Football : Parliament: Soccer matches work off tension of heated legislative battles. Even the neo-fascists are hailed as good sports.

A day after the second fistfight in Parliament this year, Russian lawmakers squared off again Saturday. This time over a soccer ball.

For the first time since communism collapsed and fractious multi-party politics burst forth in Russia, somebody figured out a harmless channel for the physical aggressions of its bitterly divided elite--no modest feat in a country where army tanks shelled the Parliament to crush an armed revolt just six months ago.

The arena of Saturday’s combat was a dusty third-floor gymnasium at Middle School No. 122 in central Moscow, and the competitors were five-man soccer teams from political parties in the Duma, the lower house of the Parliament elected in December.

They arrived in business suits, jeans or old warm-ups with Soviet emblems. Some were middle-aged and potbellied, others younger and athletic. All stripped to their shorts and ran up and down the court in breathless, sweaty 40-minute contests, slamming the ball toward nets at each end of the court.

The result of Round 1 was a muddle characteristic of politics in Russia, where reactionaries have the upper hand over market reformers but both camps are disorganized:

* Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky’s neo-fascist Liberal Democrats, using slick behind-the-back passes, clobbered the Communist-leaning Agrarian Party team 7-2. But the outcome was marred by the fact that one fascist defensive back was a ringer, not a member of Parliament.

* The hottest matchup--the radical reformers of the Russia’s Choice A-team versus the Communists--did not materialize. The Communist team failed to show up.

* Russia’s Choice, the pre-election favorite that was upset by the neo-fascists in December’s voting, helped beat itself. Its B-team kicked the ball into its own net in a 2-0 loss to a centrist party called New Regional Policy.

* Gennady E. Burbulis, who quit Russia’s Choice last week, played for the breakaway December 12 Union and scored every goal in a 3-0 win over the Party of Unity and Accord. “A terrible blow to democratic soccer,” moaned Yegor T. Gaidar, the Russia’s Choice leader and non-playing coach.

For all its flaws, the competition was relatively clean and the intended spirit of camaraderie prevailed. There was much talk, reminiscent of Brezhnev-era Soviet-speak, about sportsmen serving as “ambassadors of peace.” The round-robin tournament will continue next Saturday.

“Today we’re letting sporting passions rise up in place of political passions,” said Mikhail A. Mityukov, a Russia’s Choice elder watching from the sidelines.

The idea came from Boris N. Rogatin, a lawmaker in the Soviet days and now head of Russia’s Confederation of Sports Organizations. He approached Duma Chairman Ivan Rybkin, who welcomed it.

Rybkin, a former Communist who calls himself a social democrat and belongs to the Agrarian Party, is credited with trying to steer the Duma from harsh talk to hard work. A soccer tournament suited his goal of a collegial atmosphere for compromise on the government’s reform program.

At the same time, President Boris N. Yeltsin has embraced a more conservative reform course while calling for a “civic accord” that would halt efforts to trim his powers or shorten his term. Also, the Communist Party has formally abandoned its belief in the legitimacy of violence to achieve socialism.

As a result, the extremist rhetoric that accompanied reformers and reactionaries along their collision course toward last October’s bloody street fighting in Moscow is heard less often these days.

Still, the Duma is a roughhouse where sharp disagreements are more frequent than deals. The Duma amnesty law that let former Vice President Alexander V. Rutskoi and other leaders of the revolt leave prison in February was particularly divisive. Zhirinovsky has twice picked fistfights with fellow deputies, including one Friday with a defector from his own party.

The neo-fascist leader was not present at Saturday’s soccer matches. Alexander Vengerovsky, a leader of the party, joked that Zhirinovsky was too busy preparing sports teams in karate and boxing. “He trained yesterday on his own,” Vengerovsky quipped.

Members of Zhirinovsky’s soccer team, however, were eager to distance themselves from their leader’s bullying behavior.

“We have no antipathy toward other deputies as people,” Andrei Dorovskikh said after scoring three goals against the Agrarians. “After such a game, in which we gained respect for each other on the court, none of us would permit himself to shout at a comrade within the walls of the Duma.”

The Agrarian players, Soviet collective-farm veterans who competed in white souvenir T-shirts emblazoned with “Moscow” and a silhouette of St. Basil’s Cathedral, were quick to praise the neo-fascists as good sports as well as better players.

Along the sidelines there was vague discussion about whether any of this would help Yeltsin achieve his “civic accord.” Some who favor it said yes, maybe so; others, who think it’s nothing but a plot to make Yeltsin a dictator, said no. “I wouldn’t overestimate the political importance of football,” cautioned Gaidar, who wants the accord.

But nobody could argue with Burbulis, the former Yeltsin strategist whose three goals Saturday gave his words extra weight.

“If the Duma did nothing but play soccer,” he deadpanned, “Russia would immediately have civic peace.”