Striding through the aging, damp hallways of her Soviet-style caf?, Lyudmila Kovrikova spouts off dates and titles of conflicting city and federal privatization decisions more fluently than many a government official.


"That's because I have to figure it all out for my life, my future," said Kovrikova, the director of the Stromynka Caf?. "For them it's only about a bureaucratic post. If they lose one place, they'll get another."


Kovrikova, 39, and the caf? workers privatized their business two years ago and they have been hoping ever since to renovate it and install a fast-food counter.


But in the murky world of Moscow-style privatization, the workers have been granted only the business' equipment, tables and chairs. The fight for the real prize -- the caf?'s real estate -- has thrust Kovrikova into the middle of a battle between Mayor Yury Luzhkov and the Yeltsin administration's privatization minister, Anatoly Chubais, over who controls privatization in Moscow.


Chubais is pushing to speed lagging reforms in Moscow and assert federal control over the sell-off of former Soviet property. Luzhkov, an increasingly strident supporter of central economic control, wants the city to remain as landlord of most commercial real estate in Moscow.


In the middle are thousands of businesses like the Stromynka Caf?, caught in a netherworld of being not quite private- and not quite state-owned.


"If we own the stoves and pots and chairs but have to work in someone else's space, the point of privatization is lost," says Kovrikova. She sees buying the caf? as the only chance to gain the security she needs to invest in making it competitive. Otherwise, she fears, astronomically rising rents -- or a buyer with better connections -- will snatch it out from under her.


The caf?, at 9 Sokolnicheskaya Ploshchad, is located in a relatively tony section of northeastern Moscow in a modern apartment and shopping complex.


The Stromynka's cavernous two stories enclose an institutional-looking cafeteria, a run-down bar with slot machines and enormous kitchens. On a good day, the caf? serves traditional Russian soups, breaded chicken, salads and fried potatoes.


Kovrikova and other employees privatized the caf? in February 1992 under a city program that turned over nearly 100 percent of Moscow's stores and restaurants to employees for largely symbolic sums.


As in the vast majority of cases, the Moscow Property Committee did not let Kovrikova privatize the real estate immediately, but promised her the right -- beginning one year later -- either to buy it or to sign a 25-year lease with the city.


But by the time Luzhkov had been appointed mayor, in June 1992, the city was losing its appetite to sell its real estate. With privatization in the city floundering, Chubais was taking matters into his own hands. The State Property Committee allowed the Defense Ministry to purchase 20 buildings where it had acted as superintendent under the Soviet housing system -- among them the one that housed the Stromynka Caf?. The cost was 56 million rubles (about $34,000.)


A ministry group formed a firm called Eksikom for the purchase and the company refused to sell the caf? or provide a long-term lease, Kovrikova said.


She went to court to claim her right to buy the property. In January of this year, Russia's High Arbitration Court sided with the caf?'s claim that the city owned the property and that its promise superceded Chubais' transfer.


The decision, which Eksikom is appealing, came in time for the first spat between Luzhkov and Chubais.


The decision was "proof," Luzhkov wrote, that Chubais' "thieving" privatization policies equated to the illegal sale of city property on the cheap.


But Kovrikova suspects that Luzhkov is twisting the victory toward his own political ends.


Luzhkov is lobbying President Boris Yeltsin to approve a "special" privatization plan for Moscow that would leave the city as landlord of most commercial real estate because "the city needs money," said Oleg Baranov, an official at the Moscow Property Committee.


Baranov said the city's plan would let the city determine how private firms are run, to avoid situations like milk stores changing money or selling vodka.


Saying the city-as-landlord would offer 25-year-leases untouchable by corruption, he shrugged off Kovrikova's financial worries. "In Western countries, not all businesses own their space, and they work just fine," he said.


Luzhkov critics say the city authorities want to retain their landlord role for reasons beyond merely collecting rent.


"They need power and control," said Larisa Piyasheva, Luzhkov's former privatization adviser, who said she was ousted in 1992 for opposing Luzhkov's desire to keep land in city coffers.


The city-as-landlord plan, she said, allows city officials "to ask for bribes every time a decision is made."


Kovrikova expressed frustration Friday that the city had aided her court victory apparently not in order to back her but to keep control for themselves.


"It's a political game," she said. "I understand that the city needs money, but it should be found somewhere else."