The elections are as much a contest between personalities, and the power blocs they control,
as a conventional electoral race between parties. Click the names on the right for an at-a-glance
guide to the key figures and political groupings.
Grigory Yavlinsky is Russia's foremost liberal
politician, and the darling of the intelligentsia. A
one-time junior boxing champion, who became
an economic adviser to the last Soviet leader,
Mikhail Gorbachev, he came fourth in the 1996
presidential election with just over seven per
cent of the vote.
Having always refused any position in government lower
than the rank of prime minister, which he was never
offered, he has remained untainted either by corruption
scandals or the failures of earlier governments.
Aged 47, he has often been one of the harshest critics of
government policy, and describes the result of eight
years of reform in Russia as "bandit capitalism".
Critics have accused him of putting personal ambition
before the interests of Russian democracy by refusing to
co-operate with other pro-reform parties. Mr Yavlinsky
has declared his intention to run in June's presidential
election, but the failure of his Yabloko party to gain more than 6% in the December parliamentary election does not bode well for his chances of success.