I have a famous friend -- the film director Stanislav Govorukhin. I remember how, two years ago, when both of us were newly-elected deputies to the Moscow City Council, we made a decision to release his passionate expose of social ills "No Way to Live". At that time the Communists were still in power and had banned this most anti-communist of films. It was the cinema sensation of the year.


A year ago, right after the putsch, I invited Govorukhin to the first anniversary of the magazine Stolitsa, and he said of our publication: "We're engaged in the same pursuit".


But that's where our paths diverged. Govorukftin has made a new film, "The Russia We Have Lost", in which he laments the collapse of the empire, and sees the social structure of pre-revolutionary, czarist Russia as an ideal worth striving for. He even expresses isolationist sentiments, tor which he was severely criticized by the liberal Westernizers. Govorukhin stood his ground, writing a series of articles in which he took an increasingly extreme and intransigent position. He visited the "recluse of Vermont", Solzhenitsyn, made friends with that advocate of Russian power, yesterday's democrat Sergei Stankevich, and was showered with praise by conservative publications.


The "patriots" also got into the act. They gave Govorukhin a sign: "We want to get together". This is understandable: Union with the Communists had not brought them popularity with the wider public, and they were seeking allies among well-loved public figures. In a stroke of good fortune, Govorukhin appeared at the conference of the Russian National Assembly, a far-right, nationalistic organization, and took a prominent front row seat, surrounded by warriors wearing the black uniform of the notorious "Pamyat" front. Television reporters noticed: They showed it that night on all the news programs. At that point Govorukhin realized that he'd gone too far and tried to retreat.


I heard him explain his position to me recently when we unexpectedly ran into each other on a plane from Moscow to Rome.


He said he had become disillusioned with our "so-called democrats", who had completely forgotten about Russian patriotism, and was disappointed in "the so-called democratic press", which served the powers that be and had not noticed that it had become more enslaved to them than it ever was to the Communists. To be fair, Stanislav Sergeyevich made several references to the "patriots" and their press, but his heart wasn't in it -- they weren't the ones picking on him. He also expressed a thought which Solzhenitsyn had given him previously: "Unfortunate is the country where the words 'patriot' and 'democrat' have become insults". Govorukhin announced that he was the representative of some "third force".


This loose talk about a "third force" is being heard more and more often these days, while more and more people are beginning to say: "I'm neither with the democrats nor the patriots". This was my reply to Govorukhin:


Let's compare our positions. You can't stand the so-called "liberals", who are putting themselves at the service of those in power in Russia today -- and I cant stand them. You are disturbed by the abundance of old-style bureaucrats in these circles of power -- and I am disturbed. You are disgusted by the union of bankrupt communists with anyone at all -- and I am likewise disgusted. You are worried by the advance of crime, the degeneration of our nation, the degradation of our youth -- and these problems worry me as well. You are for a strong Russia -- and I am not opposed. But you are wrong in one thing.


You use terms like "patriots" and "democrats", considering them to be the two major social forces in Russia, and set yourself against both of them. This is a mistake. We have neither "democrats" nor "patriots" as even marginally significant social movements with any kind of definite program.


Take the "democrats". We usually consider that the democrats came to power after August 1991. This is not the case. Are Yury Afanasyev, Galina Starovoitova, Gavriil Popov running the country? They were leaders of the democratic movement under the Communists, but they're not in power. Or, perhaps, you are trying to remember what role today's leaders -- Gennady Burbulis, Yury Skokov, Yury Petrov or, say, Yegor Gaidar -- played in the democratic movements of 1988, 1989 or even 1990? Real power is in the hands of very different people today.


And secondly, the democratic movement today is in a very ambiguous situation. Many of yesterday's "democrats" have no intention of blindly supporting Yeltsin and his reforms, but see no reason to set themselves in opposition to him. In addition to this a broad political spectrum is being created. The names of new parties make the head spin, and the problem is not just the names: The ideological soulmates of yesterday now have differing, sometimes diametrically opposed, views on key political problems -- from reform to the Kuril Islands. This concerns the "democratic press" as well, where there is no agreement at all.


Or take the "patriots". On the pages of one and the same "patriotic" newspaper, Dyen, we have communists, monarchists, our old friend General Sterligov and the KGB opponent Vlasov. Where is the agreement? Perhaps you'll say they are united in their opposition to the government. Then why aren't Arkady Volsky, Nikolai Travkin, Konstantin Borovoi rushing to join them? They are also opposed to the direction the present reforms are taking,


In short, there cannot be a "third force" where the first two do not exist. The political structure of Russia is just now in the process of forming itself. To see it in black and white is a big mistake.


Andrei Malgin is editor-in-chief of the weekly news magazine Stolitsa.