* Y2K:

Former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin opened his year 2000presidential campaign by declaring himself a candidate for the Duma in anupcoming special election. …The moribund reformist party Russia’sDemocratic Choice, led by former prime minister Yegor Gaidar, showed signsof life at its recent convention when a speaker called Moscow’s popularmayor Yuri Luzhkov “an outright nationalist and a Nazi.” The same speakerurged Yeltsin to run for a third term, clearing the way for Gaidar orAnatoly Chubais to run in 2004. …General Aleksandr Lebed, now governor ofthe immense Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia, said his Honor and Motherlandparty will field candidates in many if not all of next year’s parliamentaryraces. …Potential presidential candidate General Andrei Nikolaev, formerchief of the Border Service, will vie with General Lebed for theorder-and-progress vote. He is forming a new political movement called “TheUnion of People’s Power and Labor” to compete in the 1999 parliamentaryelections.