Russia's rising political star

To some he is a nationalist demogogue riding a Russian backlash against democracy. To others he is post-Soviet Russia's first genuine social democrat, offering something like a Russian version of a New Deal.

While opinions on Sergei Glazyev diverge widely, one thing is indisputable: He is Russia's fastest-rising political star.

Though his presidential bid against the overwhelmingly popular Vladimir Putin doesn't stand much of a chance, some observers see Mr. Glazyev as Putin's successor in 2008.

By then, Glazyev says he believes that Russia may be ready to take the road to European-style social democracy, which it missed in 1991 when the USSR collapsed and the country plunged into a brutal, winner-take-all form of capitalism.

"We do not have a normal, socially responsible economic system in Russia today," says Glazyev, whose soft-spoken, cerebral personal manner seems sharply at odds with his fire-breathing public image. "Russia's market is controlled not by the forces of market competition but by monopolists, oligarchs, and criminal groups. This is what we must change."

It's a popular theme in Russia that has its most dramatic expression in the current fraud case against super-rich businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

A mid-January opinion poll by the ROMIR agency shows Glazyev running second behind Putin in a field of nine mostly lackluster candidates. In this case, however, second place means the support of just 3 percent of voters. Putin holds the allegiance of 78 percent of the survey's respondents.

Still, six months ago few experts would have even mentioned Glazyev as a potential player on Russia's big political stage. But in December parliamentary elections the left-nationalist movement Glazyev cofounded in August, Motherland (Rodina), came from obscurity to take 10 percent of the vote.

An economist who flirted with the Communist Party for years before forging out on his own, Glazyev argues that previous Russian governments gave away the former Soviet Union's vast natural resources to private tycoons, the so-called "oligarchs," without imposing any social obligations upon them.

Russia, he says, has 20 percent of the world's oil reserves, yet the state's tax revenue from big oil is a fraction of Canada's, or of Saudi Arabia's. A proper tax system, he claims, could yield an additional $50 billion in revenues. "We could easily double pensions, increase soldiers' pay, and provide a decent income to students," Glazyev says. "This is an entirely realistic program, not a populist come-on."

Motherland's other cochairman is Dmitry Rogozin, a pro-Kremlin nationalist. His calls for Russia to be guided by "rational national egoism" strike some as having a twang of neoimperialism. "Russia shouldn't be loved; Russia should be respected," Mr. Rogozin said recently.

During the State Duma elections last month, some liberals warned that Motherland represents Russia's new fascist threat.

"Rogozin is a nationalist. Glazyev is a socialist. This combination gives us national socialism," said Boris Nemtsov, a leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces (SPS).

Valeria Novodvorskaya, leader of the libertarian Democratic Union, says the dangerous thing about Glazyev and Motherland is that their rise reflects a Russia that is increasingly rejecting democracy. "Motherland's victory [in the Duma elections] testifies to the deep exhaustion of the population," she says.

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