The State Duma on Wednesday approved the first reading of a tough organized crime bill that some reformers have said may throw Russia back to the dark years of Stalinism.


In a session devoted entirely to organized crime, deputies sharply criticized Interior Minister Viktor Yerin, whose report on the crime situation many legislators found less than frank.


The approval of the bill by 235 votes with 43 against seemed to come in response to Yerin's admission that police efforts to keep the crime situation in check have been insufficient.


"I recognize that we are not effective enough against organized crime, corruption and drug trafficking," the minister told the Duma.


The bill, proposed by conservative Duma Security Committee chairman Viktor Ilyukhin, demands that suspects in organized crime cases give self-incriminating evidence and forces people buying expensive items to declare the source of the money to the state.


"Failure to provide proof of the legal origin of funds ... leads to the confiscation of the acquired goods," the bill says.


Companies whose property has been confiscated in this way cannot appeal the move, while private individuals can go to court about it.


"Say, when somebody buys a Mercedes that costs more than $100,000, of course he has to fill in a declaration and prove he got the money legally," Ilyukhin said.


"That's the way it's done in all civilized countries."


The bill, which still has to go through two readings at the Duma and then needs to be approved by the upper house of parliament and the president before it becomes law, faces vehement but numerically weak opposition from reformers at the Duma.


"This bill gives the state a carte blanche for high-handedness," said Alexei Alexandrov of the reformist Russia's Choice faction. "The very essence of this bill is contrary to the constitution."


Among other things, the bill provides for the creation of special three-judge courts to hear organized crime cases without a jury. Reformers have compared these courts to Stalin's feared troikas, the three-member organs that signed the death sentences of tens of thousands of Russians in the 1930s.


The deputies may have thought the law to be an adequate answer to a situation when, according to Yerin, 800 government officials have been found to be corrupt this year, and the number of discovered bribery cases grew 14 percent.


They ignored other statistics offered by the minister, indicating that the number of crimes has dropped 4 percent this year compared to 1993.


"Your report is strikingly different from what we see out in the street," Communist deputy Alevtina Aparina told Yerin.


"All lies," ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky said curtly of the report.


Zhirinovsky later insulted Yerin, causing him and the entire Interior Ministry leadership to leave the hall in protest.


"Generals in the Interior Ministry are all drunk from morning," Zhirinovsky said. "They're drunk because they get such huge bribes in the evening that they get drunk, and in the morning they need the hair of the dog."


Yerin conceded that 500 policemen have been arrested on bribery charges this year.