THE SLATE THAT CALLS ITSELF CLEAN…. A

new coalition will try to pose a challenge to Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s Fatherland movement in the December 19 parliamentary elections. Despite its alliance with Tatarstan President Mintimer Shamiev’s All-Russia movement, Luzhkov’s group is weak outside Moscow. The new coalition, called “Unity,” has already enlisted thirty-one of Russia’s eighty-nine regional leaders, including Kursk governor Aleksandr Rutskoi (a leader of the parliamentary rebellion of 1993) and Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, the chess-playing megalomaniacal president of Kalmykia. Heading up Unity is long-time Yeltsin supporter Sergei Shoigu, now minister for emergency situations, former Interior Minister Aleksandr Gurov and popular wrestling champion Aleksandr Karelin. Shoigu told his partisans that their goal is “to sweep away the Moscow-dwelling politicians, of whom people will remember nothing but their culpability.”