| For Yuri
Shchekochikhin, 45, The inaugural session of the new State Duma is
an exercise in deja vu. Strolling the labyrinthine corridors of the old
State Planning Committee building near Red Square where the lower chamber
of
the Russian legislature has been housed since May 1994, the newly elected
Shchekochikhin recognizes many faces from the era of Mikhail Gorbachev.
Back
then he was one of 2,250 parliamentarians in the old Congress of the
People's Deputies. Former Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, now leader
of a small pro-Communist bloc of Deputies, comes up to pump his hand and
say
that it's been a long time no see. Shchekochikhin is underwhelmed. "Ryzhkov
never did see much of me in the old days when he was seated at the main
tribunal in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses," he confesses.
Disillusioned by the failure of Gorbachev's reforms, Shchekochikhin
swore he would never run for office again after the Congress was disbanded
in December 1991. For the past four years, he has mostly been writing
columns about the Russian Mafia for the Moscow weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta.
But when the reformist Yabloko movement of economist Grigori
Yavlinsky asked the popular journalist to head its list of Moscow
candidates in December's Duma elections, Shchekochikhin succumbed to the
lure of the political spotlight. "I felt I was missing something,"
he explains. "As a journalist, I'm tired of writing, speaking and
shouting about issues, when I know that public opinion counts for nothing
in Russia today. Maybe I can do something in the Duma."
The mind-numbing debates over procedural points remind him of the Soviet-era
Congress, he says, though the Duma has fewer, and more professional,
Deputies. But now there are the tirades of ultranationalist Vladimir
Zhirinovsky, which have taken some getting used to. Shchekochikhin was
appalled, for example, to hear Zhirinovsky rant about American forces
using
Hungary not as a staging post for Bosnia but as a launching pad to seize
the
Black Sea ports of Odessa and Novorossiisk. Then he noticed that no one
else
was paying any attention. Says Shchekochikhin: "Veteran Deputies
from the
last Duma seem to block Zhirinovsky out like disturbing background noise."
The rookie Deputy's first days in parliament have been a grueling round
of
debates, votes and party-faction meetings. The 46 Yabloko Deputies make
up
the fourth largest group in parliament, and their support was keenly sought
by the dominant Communist Party when the "Big Red Parliamentary Machine"
came up 10 votes short in its first attempt to elect a Communist to the
post
of Speaker. Shchekochikhin and his colleagues were under strong pressure
from both Zhirinovsky and the Our Home Is Russia faction of Prime Minister
Victor Chernomyrdin to reject the Communists' blandishments. Yabloko held
the line against the Communists on a second ballot, but they won the third
time around. Boris Yeltsin furiously lashed out at Yabloko for seeking
a
compromise with the Communists. Says Shchekochikhin: "The President
got it
wrong. They won without us."
Shchekochikhin nonetheless believes he can contribute to positive change.
In
the scramble for places on 28 parliamentary committees, he has submitted
his
name for a seat on the State Duma Committee on Security, where he hopes
to
follow up on his reportorial interests by investigating the international
connections of organized crime in Russia and drafting a code of ethics
for
the Security Services. He admits that a journalist on a security committee
is a bit like a fox in a henhouse. "Of course, there will be many
things I
cannot talk about," he says. "But other issues should be made
public. The
heads of our Security Services need to account for why the struggle against
terrorism is going so badly."
As always in Russia, bureaucratic headaches have troubled the new Deputies.
Until committee assignments were sorted out, Shchekochikhin had to work
without an office and hung out in the reception room of Yabloko's Vladimir
Lukin, the veteran chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, using
his stationery to answer letters. Shchekochikhin is still waiting for
his official ID and a Deputy's lapel badge shaped like the Russian tricolor
flag. "The first batch they made apparently came out with the wrong
color of blue," Shchekochikhin explains. "So, many of the Deputies
are wearing badges from the old Supreme Soviet and the parliament of the
Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic."
Given the numerical advantage of the Communist bloc in the new parliament,
Shchekochikhin says he is prepared for more defeats than victories. Looking
ahead to six turbulent months before Russia's presidential election, he
feels haunted by the history of Russia's faltering democracy, especially
the
1993 showdown between Yeltsin and the rebellious legislature. "You
can't
help feeling that something is going to happen," says Shchekochikhin.
"You
have this sense that the parliament might not serve out its full term--and
it may end again with political games and tanks in the streets. This time,
though, I will be witnessing everything from the inside." Once a
journalist,
always a journalist.
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