In Russia, Democracy Yields a Motley Crowd of Deputies

If there’s one thing parliamentary elections proved this week, it’s that there is a place for everyone in Russia’s democracy.

The deputies who will take their seats in January in the Duma, parliament’s lower house, represent virtually every strain of ideology--and political malady--to visit Russia in recent times.

Did your political party formerly participate in mass repression, killings and the deportation of millions of people to labor camps? There’s no need to apologize. Take a seat in the Duma.

Were you responsible for bringing on Russia’s economic collapse last year and costing millions of people their life savings? Not to worry. Russian voters are very forgiving.

In some societies, such people might be considered villains. Here they become members of parliament.

“The parliamentary elections have graphically showed that the majority of Russian voters are politically immature yet already indifferent to politics,” said Pavel G. Bunich, who lost his bid for reelection to the 450-seat Duma. “This has resulted in a situation where the newly elected Russian parliament looks like a motley bunch of politicians, some of whom managed to create one of the most merciless regimes in the world, while others robbed the whole country naked not so long ago.”

Russia’s democracy is truly representative: The new Duma will take in suspected organized-crime figures, former KGB generals and tycoons who amassed their fortunes through the corrupt privatization of government assets.

Former Interior Minister Anatoly S. Kulikov, who led Russia to defeat in the 1994-96 Chechen war, was rewarded with a Duma seat. So was former Supreme Soviet Chairman Anatoly I. Lukyanov, who took part in the 1991 coup attempt against Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Former Soviet Politburo member Yegor K. Ligachev, once Gorbachev’s second-in-command, was victorious. So was Alexander V. Korzhakov, President Boris N. Yeltsin’s former bodyguard and drinking buddy, who wrote an embarrassing tell-all book about the president.

Three key officials who presided over the August 1998 fiscal collapse will join them in the new Duma: former Prime Minister Sergei V. Kiriyenko, former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Y. Nemtsov and former Finance Minister Mikhail M. Zadornov.

“These elections demonstrated that our people can be easily manipulated into voting for virtually anybody, even the embodiment of evil,” said a bitter Pavel I. Voshchanov, who lost his race for the Duma in a Moscow district after an opponent smeared him as a pimp on the eve of the election.

“Some observers may say that the people were fooled, but in most cases you can only fool a fool,” he said. “This is the biggest problem of our people whose best representatives--the bearers of such basic qualities as honor, dignity, wisdom, honesty and kindness--have been periodically and methodically eradicated throughout the 20th century.”

Of course, some respected citizens were among the winners: Olympic wrestler Alexander A. Karelin, a three-time gold medal winner, and police Gen. Alexander I. Gurov, who was among the first to denounce organized crime in the Soviet Union, both rode into the Duma as leaders of the pro-Kremlin Unity bloc.

There also were some high-profile candidates of questionable motive who didn’t make it into the Duma: Reputed crime boss Sergei A. Mikhailov was bumped off the ballot at the last minute on a technicality, and outspoken anti-Semitic Communist leader Gen. Albert M. Makashov, an incumbent deputy, was disqualified for violating election rules. Yuri T. Shutov, who was running from his St. Petersburg jail cell while awaiting his murder trial, lost his race.

Voters in six districts refused to elect any candidate at all, casting more ballots for “none of the above” than for any single contender. Under Russian law, that means no one won in those districts, and new elections must be held. Nationwide, “none of the above” received 3.32% of the party slate vote--placing it ahead of 20 of the 26 parties on the ballot.

Nevertheless, there were plenty of votes around for some of the most controversial figures of the post-Soviet era.

Two wealthy members of the Kremlin inner circle were victorious in remote regions far from Moscow and the scrutiny of the national media.

Tycoon Roman A. Abramovich won in remote Chukotka, nine time zones from the Kremlin and one of the country’s most impoverished provinces. The Sibneft oil company, controlled by Abramovich, reportedly supplied the Arctic region with $5 million worth of oil during the campaign.

Billionaire Boris A. Berezovsky, believed to be the mastermind of the Unity bloc’s near-tie with the Communists for first place nationwide, won his own election in Karachayevo-Cherkessia, an impoverished region in southern Russia. During the campaign, Berezovsky promised to build a car-parts factory in the region.

While neither Berezovsky nor Abramovich has much use for the apartments, cars and free air travel that come with the job of Duma deputy, they may benefit from another parliamentary perk: blanket immunity from prosecution. As key figures in the Kremlin ruling clique, they might have faced investigations into the sources of their wealth when Yeltsin’s term ends next year.

Another winner was Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, Russia’s longest-serving prime minister, who allegedly became wealthy while running the government during the era of privatization. Chernomyrdin, the former head of Russia’s gas monopoly, chose to run in a major gas-producing region of Siberia.

In fact, being a former prime minister seemed to help candidates’ election chances. All four prime ministers fired by Yeltsin over the past 20 months--Chernomyrdin, Kiriyenko, Yevgeny M. Primakov and Sergei V. Stepashin--won Duma seats.

The biggest winner, however, was singer and Duma Deputy Iosif D. Kobzon, sometimes called Russia’s Frank Sinatra, who received 94% of the vote in his Moscow district. He was denied a visa to enter the United States in 1995 because of FBI reports allegedly linking him to Russian organized crime.

Voshchanov, a former Yeltsin press secretary, said he believes that the malleability of the Russian voter is a dangerous development and that the results of Sunday’s election will give the Kremlin a free hand in running the country.

“Some Western analysts may raise hopes that the new Duma will be more democratic and less pro-Communist than the previous one,” he said. “But I would disagree with this notion. I think the new Duma will be a step toward the creation of a new totalitarian system.”