Russia's rising political star

"The authorities created an environment, beginning with the war in Chechnya and leading to the arrest and humiliation of Khodorkovsky, that encourages the population to give up on freedom and Western values," she says. "Motherland is the vanguard of reaction, like storm troopers without the black uniforms."

A similar point is made by analyst Konstantin Simonov, the director of the independent Center for Political Trends in Moscow.

"Glazyev's economics, in the Russian context, will lead us back to the old planned economy and political system," he says. "He doesn't openly promote nationalism, but the social group he appeals to has certain expectations which he knowingly feeds."

Glazyev shrugs off the criticism. "Just because we speak of national interests doesn't make us nationalists," he says. "We think national interests lie in having a democratic society, the rule of law, and prosperity for the population."

The SPS and another Western-oriented liberal party, Yabloko, were virtually wiped out in the December polls, both failing to win the minimum 5 percent of votes required for entering the Duma.

Some experts believe the Kremlin may have encouraged Glazyev and his tough talk of taxing the rich to improve life for Russia's legions of poor, as a ploy to take votes away from its traditional nemesis on the left, the Communist Party. If so, the tactic worked; the Communist vote was halved, to around 12 percent - but Glazyev became an overnight political sensation.

"The Kremlin didn't expect Motherland to be as successful as it was," says Svyatoslav Kaspe, an expert with the Russian Public Policy Center, an independent think tank. "Now some are saying the Kremlin created a Frankenstein that it can't control."

Putin himself appears to have torn a page or two from Glazyev's book.

Last autumn he ordered the arrest of oil kingpin Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky, a politically active tycoon who funded at least two parties opposing the Kremlin, is officially charged with fraud and tax evasion. Putin has warned other oligarchs to be more "socially responsible" and signaled that steep increases in oil and other natural resource taxes can be expected in his second term.

"Putin's brawl with the oligarchs sounds like Glazyev's on the populist level, but they are actually quite different," says Vladimir Pribylovsky, director of Panorama, an independent political think tank.

Mr. Pribylovsky describes Glazyev as a Keynesian economist, who wants to redistribute income from rich to poor, whereas Putin is following standard liberal recipes for tax reform.

Glazyev agrees, and says he intends to liven up the March 14 presidential election by hammering Putin from the left flank. "The policy of the government and president today is actually aimed at strengthening the criminal system of power and capital which arose when a bunch of oligarchs laid their hands on other peoples' property and the country's natural resources," he says.

And if he does well, some experts believe Glazyev may indeed have a shot in 2008.

"If Glazyev comes in a respectable second he will be able to declare himself the leader of left-wing forces, and begin taking that mantle away from the Communists," says Mr. Simonov. "That will mean there's a new social reality out there."

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