Having met with President Boris Yeltsin and having thoroughly berated Russia's military fiasco in Chechnya, human rights advocate Sergei Kovalyov has returned to the Caucasus as a peace broker. Old associates can tell you how well prepared he is for this role.


Nikolai Vorontsov first met Kovalyov in 1956, at Moscow State University. The occasion was solemn: An unofficial group of students who dared study Mendelian genetics was being publicly upbraided for departing from the teachings of Soviet geneticist Trofim Lysenko.


An assembly was called. The auditorium overflowed with more than 700 students. One of them -- only one of them -- stepped forward to defend the study group. It was the biology graduate student Kovalyov.


Nearly 40 years have passed since then, and Kovalyov, now Yeltsin's adviser on human rights, has proven himself to be blunt and forthright on another inflammatory topic. The issue -- Chechnya -- and the audience -- the world -- are immeasurably larger. But Kovalyov, a former political prisoner who is rapidly acquiring the title of Russia's next Andrei Sakharov, has not backed down.


"This is a man with an acute sense of justice," said Vorontsov, a former Soviet environment minister, who with Kovalyov is a member of the Duma and Russia's Choice faction. "He doesn't fear power. He speaks the truth to everyone."


Since the war in Chechnya began Dec. 11, Kovalyov, 64, has been in Grozny monitoring events and acting as a beacon of conscience. Last week, he returned to Moscow to deliver a blistering condemnation of how the highest echelons of Kremlin power were conducting the war in the Caucasus.


"You cannot live in a state run by villains," he said. "We understand very well that not only the destiny of the 1 million people of Chechnya is being decided in Grozny ... the destiny of Russia is being decided there." And that was just the beginning of a tirade that likened Yeltsin's inner circle and its propaganda machine to the Nazis.


It is no longer shocking to see people like Yeltsin or Defense Minister Pavel Grachev unceremoniously roasted in the national press. But when the critique comes from someone like Kovalyov, who in 1974 was sentenced to seven years of prison and three years of exile for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda," the words carry a certain weight.


And he knows it. When in Moscow last week, Kovalyov did not ask for a meeting with Yeltsin, he demanded it.


"I politely told them that I insisted, and also that the president was free to say no if he wanted to show that the problem of human rights in Chechnya was not his concern, or if he did not have the time to deal with important state problems," Kovalyov said.


"After that, the meeting was scheduled for one o'clock," he said with just a whiff of smugness.


For public consumption at least, Yeltsin indulges his counselor's contrariness. "The presidential advisers have a right to their own opinion," Yeltsin spokesman Denis Perkin said. "Especially an authority like Sergei Kovalyov."


That authority was hard won. According to the Russian Who's Who, Kovalyov began his human rights activity in 1967 and became a close Sakharov ally. He is one of the founders of the Human Rights Initiative Group and was an editor of the samizdat journal "The Chronicle of Current Events." That sort of work had him tossed out of his laboratory at Moscow State University in 1970.


After serving his prison term and living out his exile in Kalinin, Kovalyov returned to Moscow in 1987. In 1990, he became chairman of the Human Rights Committee of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation. He is now a deputy in the State Duma and is a founder of the Russia's Choice faction.


Events in Chechnya have thrust him into the center of attention. Last week, Vorontsov hand-delivered to the Swedish Embassy a letter nominating Kovalyov for the Nobel Peace Prize. Novaya Yezhednevnaya Gazeta named him Man of the Year, as did Izvestia, one of Russia's leading papers.


"He has moral values that he has never betrayed," Izvestia Deputy Editor Nikolai Bodnaruk said, explaining his choice.


The greatest laurel awaiting him is the mantle of Russia's most famous human rights activist. Though many are whispering that he is Russia's next Sakharov, perhaps he already is. At his press conference last week, more than 400 reporters stampeded a meeting room to hear him speak.


And as the grey, balding, wisp of a man entered the room, he was nearly obliterated by the glare of dozens of television cameras. A photographer sitting nearby looked around the hall and sighed: "They didn't even meet Sakharov this way."