RUSSIA : Zhirinovsky, Others Putting Politics in Print : The ultranationalist’s novel sends reformers to Siberia. His is one of three new books that envision utterly different futures for the nation.

A new book by Russian ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky begins with a chilling vision: On a cold November night, a train pulls out of Moscow bound for the Far North. The last wagon--a cargo car--is jammed with Zhirinovsky’s enemies. No one comes to wave goodby.

Zhirinovsky does not need to tell his history-smothered reader where the condemned are going. By his gleeful tone and the garish language of his insults, we know that they will be disposed of in the time-honored way--in Siberian labor camps.

The train holds a “Who’s Who” of Russia’s democratic experiment, including the “birth-marked reformer,” former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, a “Judas”; the “suckling pig . . . delirious economist” Yegor T. Gaidar; even the “witch” Yelena Bonner, widow of dissident Andrei D. Sakharov.

But even in fiction, Zhirinovsky apparently doesn’t dare threaten Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, the only figure in the pantheon of reformers who is spared.

The rest of the book, titled “Last Wagon to the North,” reads like Zhirinovsky’s platform for the parliamentary elections scheduled for December. The 48-year-old lawmaker now describes his philosophy as “national socialism,” but he says it has nothing in common with Nazism.

On the contrary, Zhirinovsky complains, “Hitler discredited the ideas of national socialism.”

Fortunately for Russian reformers, Zhirinovsky’s popularity rating is down. And his book is only one of three influential new tracts that aspire to lead today’s thoroughly discombobulated Russians out of the political wilderness.

The three authors envision utterly different Russias, from nationalist dictatorship to Western European-style democracy. The pivotal question seems to be how much power the state should hold.

In a sign of receding Soviet values, however, all support private-property rights, and all would like to curb the tyrannical powers of the Russian bureaucracy.

Last week, as Zhirinovsky was inviting journalists at his book party to sample a new vodka named in his honor and to toast the Russian Fatherland, economist Gaidar was also releasing his new book, an articulate, academic treatise with the distinctly unsexy title “State and Evolution.”

Joining the age-old debate between Slavophiles and westernizers, Gaidar comes down squarely on the side of the latter, arguing that Russia has a rare historic opportunity to become a Western-style nation with a government of limited powers.

Unfortunately for the westernizers, who seem to be losing Russia’s propaganda war, Gaidar’s 206-page opus may be destined to go unread.

“It sounds like a textbook,” said Vera K. Kuznetsova, an editor at Radio Liberty. “It will be read only by his political opponents, who need to know their enemy.”

“Zhirinovsky’s book is written to attract voters,” she added. “It’s even printed in big letters so any babushka can read it.”

Meanwhile, a slim monograph titled “Dictator” is also making the rounds.

Its author, former Yeltsin aide-turned-businessman Mikhail A. Bocharov, has printed a private edition of the 64-page political novella and delivered copies to the Kremlin, the Russian government, both houses of Parliament, regional leaders, and other movers and shakers.

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The thinly veiled political fantasy begins in September, 1995, when Yeltsin, in poor health and with the economy collapsing around him, decides to hand power over to an enlightened dictator.

“It’s not Zhirinovsky,” Bocharov said in a recent interview. “It’s a person who thinks only of his country, never of himself. . . . It’s not a dictatorship of head-smashing, it’s a dictatorship of conscience.”

The dictator turns out to be a wise technocrat and free-marketeer who tames inflation, smashes organized crime and sets Russia firmly on the road to a socially balanced capitalism. “Russia is a country where anything can happen,” Bocharov said, happily autographing his book.