NEW NATIONALIST ELECTORAL BLOC CREATED.

Several prominent nationalist figures have announced in Moscow the creation of a new electoral bloc named, after the holder of the first place on its electoral list, the "Stanislav Govorukhin Bloc." Govorukhin, who recently left the Democratic Party of Russia, is a renowned nationalist filmmaker and chairman of the Duma’s special commission to investigate the origins of the war in Chechnya. Other bloc leaders include Oleg Rumyantsev, now a hard-line nationalist but formerly a Social-Democratic leader in the Duma and a major contributor to Russian constitutional documents after the collapse of communism; and Viktor Aksyuchits, a prominent religious dissident during the Soviet period, currently chairman of the Christian Democratic Movement and an adherent of the Christian Orthodox variety of Russian nationalism. Aksyuchits recently broke with former vice president Aleksandr Rutskoi’s Derzhava (Great Power) movement whom it has come to regard as insufficiently Russian in its program. (7)

Russian Bank Association Wary of Government Promises.