"It means the start of a new dictator-ship". This is what one Russian had


to say of the paramilitary guard force of 3-5, 000 men deployed under the personal control of Ruslan Khasbulatov, the speaker of the Russian parliament.


"Don't worry about it", was what Sergei Filatov, Khasbulatov's deputy, told a journalist who asked about the so-called White House guard on Monday. Filatov clearly isn't worried, since he was the one who signed the top-secret document creating the force back in October last year, according to an investigation carried out by Izvestia.


Izvestia had to conduct an investigation because, in this budding democracy, a paramilitary guard force of 5, 000 men had been created - and NOBODY KNEW. Its existence became known to the public at large only after two of its agents were shot during an altercation last week with a Moscow policeman who did not know that the plainclothes men confronting him were also police, with special powers.


The guards are not always in plainclothes. They sometimes wear uniforms like those of the Moscow police force, but their powers are different. A scandal broke out when it was learned that the White House guard had the right to pass guns to members of parliament, but the force still retains this authority.


The White House guard is answerable only to Khasbulatov. Its leader, General Ivan Boiko, is not subordinate to the Interior Minister, who is responsible for Russia's police forces, nor even to President Yeltsin, according to Izvestia.


Filatov's answer Monday was that the force would be put under the control of the Security Ministry. This is hardly reassuring. In the first months after the August 1991 coup, the former KGB tried to put on a softer face to impress the West; now it is no longer bothering. On the contrary, as in the arrest of two scientists last week over a Moscow News report, the renamed KGB appears these days to be flaunting its powers.


Its renewed strength coincides with an apparent increase in the influence of another shadowy organ, the Security Council, which, in turn, is outside parliamentary control. and one of the five members of that top-level body is none other than Filatov,


. The constellation of power here these days is beginning to look suspiciously like the old days, when the government took its orders from the Politburo, and the KGB, not the police, controlled "security matters".


Don't worry about it? Sorry, Mr. Filatov, but surely you jest.