Can This Man Piece Russia Back Together?

By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/MOSCOW

Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov is a hunted man these days. As a crowd of journalists tailed him on one of his traditional weekend walkabouts through Moscow building sites awash in wet snow and mud, he tried his best to look the jaunty, workaholic city boss of old. But when the journalists cornered him, the mayor admitted that his mind was elsewhere. He was waiting for the next body blow from the Kremlin.

He has good reason to be worried. For the past few weeks, day after day, Russian state television has been accusing Luzhkov of a lurid array of crimes--from involvement in the murder of an American businessman to a connection with a Japanese cult, and, of course, massive venality. His chief of police has been fired, and reports are circulating that some of his top deputies will soon be indicted for corruption.

It's nothing personal. Luzhkov--who has strenuously denied each of the accusations--is being targeted because he is a leader, along with former Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov, of Fatherland-All Russia, the main opposition group running in Russia's Dec. 19 parliamentary elections. And the fight between the Kremlin and Fatherland is less for the Duma, or lower house of Parliament, than for position in the June 2000 presidential elections. The success of the Luzhkov-Primakov alliance in next weekend's vote will decide whether current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin can expect to coast into the presidency next June or will have to face a serious challenger. Luzhkov isn't running for the Duma next weekend, but in the peculiar world of Russian politics, he is vying, through Fatherland, for a shot at controlling Russia's future.

Luzhkov has been on the mind of many Russians since he won re-election as mayor in 1996 with almost 90% of the vote, an astonishing endorsement. Only five years younger than Yeltsin, he has ostentatiously underlined his vigor--and the President's frailty--with regular, well-publicized games of soccer and tennis. Small, bullet-headed and energetic, Luzhkov, 63, seemed like the kind of reformer who might be able to do for Russian politics what he has done for Moscow--get rid of the trash and make things work.

Moscow-born, the son of a carpenter, and a mechanical engineer by training, Luzhkov rose through the unfashionable side of the Soviet hierarchy. He was an executive in the Soviet chemical industry, not a party bureaucrat. Nevertheless, he is anything but a dry party hack. He has a fascination with Catherine the Great, for instance, and he spends his spare time raising bees at his dacha outside Moscow.

His ability to make things work drew the attention in the mid-1980s of the Communist Party boss in Moscow, Boris Yeltsin. Luzhkov rose steadily under Yeltsin's benevolent shadow, and in 1992 was appointed mayor of Moscow. When the communist system collapsed, the city unceremoniously took over as much of the party's resources as it could. A corporation that is closely controlled by the mayor, Sistema ("the system"), now controls much of the capital's prime real estate, factories and construction firms, plus a media empire that includes a couple of TV stations. Luzhkov has described his blueprint for Russia's future as a mix of capitalism and state control. His models: England's Prime Minister Tony Blair and the New Labour Party.

The vehicle for realizing that blueprint is supposed to be the Fatherland movement. Launched late last year at a conference attended by more than 1,000 delegates selected from all over the country and 450 journalists, it was immediately described in the media as the new "party of power," the government in waiting. Fatherland's politics are something of a hybrid, more nationalist in some ways than Yeltsin's but also more socialist in orientation.

Luzhkov, however, has been dogged by a relentless Kremlin smear campaign. Last summer, for instance, rumors circulated that the government was planning to release damning kompromat (compromising materials) about him. One version current in the Duma was that this would take the form of a tape, either video or audio, of Luzhkov ordering the murder of a business rival. No tape ever surfaced, but the prospect of a brutal war of charge and countercharge reinforced the urgings of some of the mayor's advisers: forget about the presidency, back someone else and position yourself to be the great reformist Prime Minister of the new millennium.

The tandem with Primakov seemed the perfect way out. Luzhkov announced that he would defer to Primakov, who at the time seemed a shoo-in for President. But the attacks continued. Instead of planning for the future, Luzhkov is now fighting for his political survival.

The Kremlin's election strategists, orchestrators of the anti-Fatherland campaign, keep well out of the public eye. They include chief of staff Alexander Voloshin; Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana; former dissident turned political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky; and two businessmen and Yeltsin-family favorites, Alexander Mamut and Roman Abramovich. Much of the war has been waged by proxy on TV, with nasty Sunday-night news battles setting the tone. On ORT, a state-owned network that is largely controlled by Yeltsin supporter Boris Berezovsky, news anchor Sergei Dorenko bludgeons home the idea that Luzhkov is a murderer, a crook, a hypocrite. Yevgeny Kiselev, the main talking head on the private, pro-opposition TV network NTV, tries to defend Fatherland. The pungent, brutal Dorenko seems to be winning, largely because Kiselev often trips over his own convoluted sentences.

Five anarchists summed up the mood of many voters last week when they hung a banner over the side of Lenin's mausoleum on Red Square. AGAINST EVERYBODY, it read. For what it's worth, pundits are betting that the Communist Party and its allies, led by the leaden-tongued Gennadi Zyuganov, will once again emerge with the largest group in the new Duma, with around 20% to 25% of its 450 members. This would be fine as far as the Kremlin is concerned. It would infinitely prefer that Putin run against Zyuganov rather than Primakov next year. The extreme nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, these days a faithful supporter of the government, is involved in one of his usual publicity-seeking fights, threatening to challenge the election results after losing a dispute with the central election commission. A new bloc trying to make its mark, the Union of Right Forces, led by Sergei Kiriyenko, enjoys Kremlin favor but may not make it into the Duma. Under Russian election laws, a party or movement has to obtain 5% of the vote nationwide before it can sit in the Duma as an official faction.

The crucial battle in the Duma vote, though, is for second place. The elections will serve as a measure of how badly Luzhkov, Primakov and Fatherland have been hurt by the Kremlin's attacks. Instead of barnstorming the country and mobilizing his impressive network of contacts and favors, Luzhkov, Fatherland's most effective campaigner, has been neutralized by the Kremlin. And while Primakov exudes integrity and reassurance, he is a lackluster public politician.

For Luzhkov, the campaign has been a bitter affair. He was looking forward to a double triumph--a landslide re-election in Moscow and nationwide recognition with Fatherland. Now he must be wondering how far the government will push corruption charges against him. He underestimated the determination with which the scandal-ridden Kremlin would fight to secure its future. Much like the war in Chechnya, which is designed to be a deterrent to other republics that are considering making a bid for independence, the harsh war on Fatherland has driven home the message that you need very strong nerves to challenge the Kremlin.