NEWS ANALYSIS : Russians Face New Woes After Split Election

Before even half the parliamentary vote was counted, the Communists who recovered a shadow of their former glory were talking Monday about rebuilding the Soviet Union, firing Russia’s foreign minister and putting the brakes on privatization.

But the 22% of the vote secured by the reinvigorated Communist Party of Russia means little without allies who can contribute enough clout to create a majority coalition in the parliament.

And the widely fractured results from Sunday’s election appeared unlikely to let the front-runners turn their triumphal rhetoric into action.

Instead, analysts warn, Russia’s domestic and foreign policy could enter a phase of deep-freeze as rival political forces posture before a confused electorate in advance of the more significant presidential election scheduled for June.

Ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky and his misnamed Liberal Democratic Party polled a surprising second place, with 11% of the vote for the 450-seat Duma, the lower house of parliament. It was less than half the share he and his party collected two years ago but twice what opinion surveys had forecast.

However, neither Zhirinovsky’s radicals nor the two democratic parties that surpassed a 5% threshold for gaining seats in the Duma have enough common ground with the Communists to forge an alliance.

The government-backed Our Home Is Russia movement won almost 10% and the liberal, pro-reform Yabloko bloc had more than 8%, with about half the votes tabulated in agonizingly slow ballot-counting.

Half the Duma seats are to be divided proportionately among the parties that surpassed the threshold. The other Duma seats are being decided in individual races, the results of which are unlikely to be known for several days. But those votes too appeared scattered across a wide spectrum of political thinking, making it difficult for any of the three main forces in the Duma--leftists, nationalists and democrats--to pull together a controlling coalition.

Alexander N. Shokhin, a leader of Our Home Is Russia, proposed a cooperative alliance with Yabloko to protect democratic reforms and the nation’s fledgling market economy from expected attacks from Communists on the left and nationalists on the right.

But because Yabloko’s charismatic leader, economist Grigory A. Yavlinsky, harbors ambitions of challenging President Boris N. Yeltsin if the president seeks reelection in June, any alliance between the rival democratic factions would be temporary at best.

“It will be a time of deadlock on all political levels,” predicted Sergei Markov, a senior political analyst with the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace. “No one is interested in cooperation before the presidential elections.”

The director of Russia’s Institute of Economic Analysis, Andrei Illarionov, likewise forecast a period of stagnation as the Communists, with an eye toward the all-important presidential vote, seek to maintain their distance from responsibility for reforms that have enriched the few and alienated the many.

“The opposition needs this government for criticism until the presidential elections,” Illarionov told the Interfax news agency, saying the Communists would use the unpopular government under Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin as “a punching bag” on the campaign trail.

Victorious Communist Party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov deemed the vote a show of no confidence in the government and reiterated long-standing demands for the sacking of at least three Cabinet members, naming Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev and deputy prime ministers Anatoly B. Chubais and Sergei M. Shakhrai as those giving the people “heartburn.”

Kozyrev’s departure was thought to be imminent, because he was leading strongly in the contest to represent the northern city of Murmansk in the Duma, and Russian election law prohibits serving members of parliament from simultaneously occupying certain government posts.

The loss of Kozyrev, Yeltsin’s longest-serving Cabinet member, would probably be read as a sign of change in Kremlin relations with the outside world. But in reality, the 45-year-old diplomat was undercut by the president months ago when Yeltsin needed a scapegoat for political failings in the war-torn Balkans.

One Moscow-based Western diplomat noted that Washington and European capitals were reacting calmly to the Communist comeback, but attributed the lack of concern to inattention.

“All anyone has been talking about is Bosnia, Bosnia, Bosnia,” the diplomat said. “It’s like they don’t even know there’s been an election in Russia.”

Zyuganov also hinted at a news conference that privatization schemes worked out by Chubais would be reconsidered, especially those aimed at transferring vital defense industries and utilities to private hands.

The Communist leader repeated fire-breathing warnings about the consequences of North Atlantic Treaty Organization expansion eastward, and described Russian nationalist longings for restoration of the superpower Soviet Union as the natural desire of “normal, sane people.”

Although none of the sea changes hinted at by Zyuganov could be executed from his position as leader of the largest minority in a powerless parliament, analysts caution that Russia will suffer economic setbacks even if it stands stock-still.

Illarionov of the Institute of Economic Analysis noted that the economy will probably stagnate as politicians squabble over the need to tinker with reforms, and other analysts warn that the Communist-led leftists in the Duma may try to boost social spending to appease supporters, rekindling the inflation that has ravaged citizens’ spending power.

Most observers brushed off the strong showing by the Communists as an expression of popular irritation, but one unlikely to instigate major policy reversals.