Opposition Congresses Lash Out at 'Our Home'

More than a dozen Russian parties held their pre-election congresses over the weekend, drawing up their lists of candidates and putting forward various campaign slogans, but most found common cause in vilifying Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's political bloc, Our Home Is Russia.


While party leaders were careful to keep their options open, refraining from head-on attacks on their rivals in the parliamentary race, Our Home drew enough fire from liberals and hardliners alike to bear out Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Shakhrai's recent remark that hatred of Our Home is the only thing that unites the multitude of Russian parties.


"The only party I would not cooperate with is the party of bureaucrats," Yury Skokov, leader of the Congress of Russian Communities (CRC), a strong contender for the nationalist vote, told a press conference Monday. "The leaders of Our Home fly around the country on government planes, pretending that this is not part of an election campaign. The impudence of the party of power is simply incredible and we will put up a huge fight against it."


Skokov, former secretary of President Boris Yeltsin's Security Council, himself has a reputation as a gray, singularly unquotable bureaucrat, and his spirited attack on Chernomyrdin's bloc came as a surprise. But after the weekend of feverish political activity, which saw the party of power slammed as many times as there were parties with electoral ambitions, Skokov was following the trend.


"They talk about stability and a strong Russian statehood, but they cannot get school textbooks printed by September 1," Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the liberal Yabloko movement, told its congress at the weekend. numerous stabs at Our Home's ambitions.


Famous eye surgeon Svyatoslav Fyodorov named Our Home among the most bitter opponents of his Workers' Self-Government Party.


The knives are clearly out, and most of them are pointed at a party that already has a rather low popularity rating.


According to a recent poll by the VTsIOM public opinion service, Our Home has only 5 percent support, less than the Communists, Yabloko or Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democrats.


The weekly Obshchaya Gazeta last week published a ranking of 12 top political parties, compiled from assessments of the parties' regional infrastructure, fund-raising potential and the skills of their activists and functionaries by 50 experts.


Our Home was second after the Communist Party, closely followed by Zhirinovsky's supporters.


And if these parties or the Congress of Russian Communities have anything to do with it, Chernomyrdin's economic-reform policy will be due for a major revision after the December election.


Sergei Glazyev, one of the CRC leaders and the No. 3 candidate on the group's list after Skokov and General Alexander Lebed, said Monday that the influential nationalist group stands for "canceling those cases of privatization that were against the law, and there are many of those."


Glazyev added that "those cases of privatization that damaged the interests of Russia will have to be reviewed, though the new owners' interests will be considered during the review."


And the opposition parties are doing their best to match Our Home star for star when it comes to enlisting famous supporters.


Just as Chernomyrdin's bloc gave Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov the No. 2 spot on its electoral list, CRC announced Monday, according to Interfax, that Nobel Prize-winning writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn will serve as political adviser to Skokov, although he will not run for parliament himself.