Russia Ruffled by Revelry in Parliament

Behind the somber stone facade of the Duma, where colorless Soviet bureaucrats once pondered tractor output and egg consumption, the image of the new Russia is being besmirched with Bacchanalia.

Just when it seemed possible to include Russian politicians in polite company--after all, ultranationalist bad boy Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky hasn’t punched out a democrat for ages--tales of depravity and excess have come to light and cast the lower house of Russia’s parliament as a den of barbarians at civilization’s gate.

In an article Tuesday that both shocked and disgusted readers, the respected daily Moskovsky Komsomolets detailed all-night sessions of sex and drinking at the Duma and complaints from the building administration of massive theft and public defecation.

“Doorknobs, locks, toilet paper, soap, towels, glasses, cups, electrical hand dryers, telephones, mirrors--all disappear with horrible rapidity,” the newspaper reported, printing excerpts from cleaning women’s letters of complaint and an outraged appeal by the administration to Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

The Duma is now in recess, yet lights burn through the night in the 12-story building across from the Kremlin where more than 10,000 aides have unhindered access to the parliament and its surrounding labyrinth of meeting rooms and offices. That is an average of more than 22 aides for each of the 450 elected lawmakers.

Swaths of leather have been cut from the seats and backs of sofas, “as if someone were making a jacket,” the newspaper reported. Piles of excrement, it said, were found on couches in an eighth-floor hall after one particularly calamitous night in the party place that never closes.

“Unfortunately, all this is true,” conceded Duma Deputy Konstantin N. Borovoi of the reform-minded Party of Economic Freedom, when asked about the allegations. “The problem isn’t so much with the quantity of the aides but in the quality of the deputies. This Duma has a huge number of Communist deputies who hire all kinds of scum and hooligans from the street, and now you can see the consequences.”

He blamed most of the misbehavior on the 99 members of the chamber’s Communist faction, accusing them of retaining “the Soviet era’s deeply rooted propensity for petty kleptomania.”

Russia’s road to parliamentary democracy has been riddled with conflict and scandal, from the 1993 shootout before the world’s cameras between the Communist-controlled Supreme Soviet and Yeltsin’s army to fisticuffs that have drawn in female deputies and priests.

But the lawmakers’ proclivity for drama and indulgence probably detracts little from their performance, as the strong presidency of Russia relegates the Duma to little more than a tower of babble and occasional embarrassment.

Deputies earn monthly salaries of $650 to $800, depending on seniority, or about four times the average wage for an industrial worker here. They also enjoy state-supplied apartments and “relocation subsidies” of $60,000 once elected, chauffeured foreign cars, paid spa vacations, free medical services in exclusive clinics and broad access to transport and communications.

Many of their aides are ostensibly working as volunteers. But in modern Russia’s money-grubbing transition to capitalism, they are seldom motivated by altruism. Opportunities abound for the well-connected to legislate themselves tax exemptions, duty-free import privileges, property acquisition and free travel.

The newspaper said the subway and transport passes issued to the army of deputies are in themselves overwhelming Moscow’s already packed mass transit system.

Irina V. Makaveyeva, a spokeswoman for the Communist deputies, read the Moskovsky Komsomolets article with alarm and confirmed that “such deplorable things are common in the Duma.” But she assigned blame to reformist lawmakers and Zhirinovsky’s misnamed Liberal Democrats.

“This is all gross slander and outright lies,” fumed Yelizaveta P. Vlasova, an aide to Liberal Democratic Party member Mikhail S. Gutseriyev, outside whose office the revolting calling cards of the overnight revelers were discovered.

Zhirinovsky’s party won only 50 seats in December’s parliamentary elections. But it has the largest contingent of aides, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported, adding that accreditations to the Duma are openly for sale at prices upward of $2,000.

With a knee jerk from the Soviet era, the Duma administration reacted to the expose by banning foreign reporters from the premises until the deputies return to session Oct. 1.

“This is only a temporary restriction,” Yulia N. Lukashenko of the Duma press office explained by telephone. “We don’t want foreign correspondents to come to the Duma and waste their precious time in search of people who might be away on vacation.”

Meanwhile, Duma staffers retain unfettered access to the building that until five years ago was the headquarters of Gosplan, the state agency responsible for all facets of economic planning.

“Incidentally, the befouled sofas have been lost by society forever,” Moskovsky Komsomolets observed in conclusion. “Of course, the cleaning women washed them in the most thorough manner. But there was no way to get rid of the appalling odor. So now they stand uselessly in some storage room of the Duma, like mute testimony to the high culture of our young Russian parliament.”