Alexander Rutskoi may not be the most sophisticated of politicians, and his program for the country may be simplistic. But when it comes to getting votes, he has got it just right.


The presidential election is still a good two years away, but opposition politicians such as Rutskoi have already started their campaigns. They are shrewd to do so. And they are campaigning where it counts, out in the sticks, where life is economically and emotionally far removed from Moscow.


Over the last few weeks Rutskoi has been touring the provinces, building up a political base in the Russian heartland. By his account he has collected more than half a million signatures of support for his new party, the Derzhava Social Patriotic Movement, and he will need them all if he is to have any chance of becoming Russia's next president.


Vladimir Zhirinovsky also has not been idle. Since the Duma went into recess last week, he too has been on the stump, this time in the Russian Far East. He has had his setbacks -- the Mayor of Khabarovsk, for instance, refused to see him -- but one can be sure that he has found many other willing listeners to his radical nationalist views.


The democratic reformers should sit up and take notice of the tactics, though not the platforms, of Rutskoi and Zhirinovsky. This is not a summer to potter around the dacha or to take in the odd international conference. Yegor Gaidar, Grigory Yavlinsky, Sergei Shakhrai should all be out there in the provinces, pressing the flesh and defending their policies.


The problem is that most of the country's liberal politicians have little natural flair for the soapbox. They prefer to see politics as an insider's job, lobbying for policies and jostling for power among Moscow's political elite.


But it is no use having the right policies if you cannot get elected in the first place. A President Rutskoi or Zhirinovsky would be disastrous for Russia, but the liberals should not wait for one to be elected just to prove it. It is time to take a lesson in populism from the opposition.


Yavlinsky made a start with a trip to Vladivostok earlier in the summer to boost support for his Yabloko faction. Gaidar is reluctant to declare his own candidacy unless President Yeltsin decides not to stand for re-election. But this does not mean he need not campaign for his own newly formed party.


At least President Boris Yeltsin is out on the road in eastern Siberia. He too will need to rebuild his waning support over the next two years if he is to run for a second term as president -- something he doubtless understands. Yeltsin was, after all, the former Soviet Union's most successful populist.