Race for Russia’s Parliament Off to Rough Start : Politics: 5,649 candidates crowd field. Showdown pits Yeltsin government against Communists, nationalists.

Despite a court challenge that could halt the whole exercise, Russia’s second nationwide election campaign of the post-Soviet era got off to a crowded start Wednesday with a parade of televised ads by some of the 5,649 candidates for Parliament.

The Dec. 17 vote is a critical showdown between President Boris N. Yeltsin’s government and the Communists and nationalists who are hostile to free markets, civil liberties and the West.

It is also a warm-up contest among contenders for Yeltsin’s job in presidential elections set for June.

Unfortunately for voters, who shed a one-party state not long ago, the December ballot is a mind-numbing array of 43 parties--some fabricated only for this race. Among others, there is a party for beer lovers, a party for lawyers and one called Borderline Generation.

Wednesday’s formal start of campaigning did not offer much clarity to the bewildered: Party leaders ducked the first of a series of scheduled televised debates, and their TV spots featured little substance.

“Some of them say they are for debates, but when they are invited [to tape one] they fail for some reason to appear,” said Oleg Poptsov, chairman of Russian Television. “They say they were caught in traffic jams, that next time, for sure, they will come.”

Poptsov, himself confused about the number of contenders, told reporters that he was worried that the television campaign will end up offering “44 different solo performances . . . 44 woodgrouse songs.”

Because Russia sprawls across 11 time zones and its nascent parties are weak at the grass roots, television is central to the campaign.

In parliamentary elections two years ago, the neo-fascist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky outspent and outraged his rivals on TV, and his party won the largest share of the vote, 23%.

With Zhirinovsky running again, the Central Elections Commission is limiting paid ads.

Each party gets one free hour on each state-run radio and TV outlet, spread over the next month; the party can buy up to an additional hour on each station, but no more.

Under a timetable set by lottery, seven parties got 10-minute TV spots Wednesday. And viewers got heavy doses of symbolism and metaphor, some of it in monotone from fidgeting candidates facing the wrong camera.

Grigory Yavlinsky, the most popular pro-reform candidate, pontificated in front of a large apple, emblem of his Yabloko movement.

Ivan P. Rybkin, chairman of Parliament’s lower house, explained why his symbol is a goldfish: In a Russian folk tale, a fish grants the wishes of a poor fisherman.

Others heaped oblique ridicule on Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin’s party, known as Our Home Is Russia.

“A reasonable person who needs his house repaired will never give the contract to the one who has ruined the house,” said the head of the Union of Labor party.

The biggest threat to Yeltsin, Chernomyrdin and other reformers would be a strong showing by the Communists and the Congress of Russian Communities led by retired Gen. Alexander I. Lebed, darling of the patriotic right. In that case, the two parties might join forces in the presidential race.

A strong finish by Our Home, on the other hand, would boost Chernomyrdin’s stock as a presidential hopeful if the 64-year-old Yeltsin, who is hospitalized with a heart ailment, dies or steps down.

The vote may be too fragmented to mean anything. Only seven or eight parties are expected to collect more than 5% of the vote, the minimum needed under the election law to enter the Duma. Weaker parties are challenging the 5% rule in the Constitutional Court. If the rule is scrapped, the Duma would have to amend the election law and that could delay the vote.