"AT EASE, DEPUTIES!" might well be the words that open Russia's new State Duma next year, given all the men in uniform who will be running in the parliamentary elections set for Dec. 17. Almost every party of note among the 260-odd officially registered political groups has included at least one general or high-ranking officer in the list of candidates who will automatically win seats in the lower house of the Federal Assembly should their parties gain 5% of the popular vote. The prospect of so many military legislators has already prompted quips that the Duma will look more like the General Staff than a real parliament.

The political recruitment of military men is easy to explain. Even though the armed forces have been tainted in the past three years by corruption scandals and riven by dissent over the war in Chechnya, military officers still command respect as a force for discipline and order in a country where the authority of almost every other social institution has plummeted. Furthermore, after hard-liners sent the army into the streets of Moscow in the aborted August 1991 coup and President Boris Yeltsin ordered the military to fire on the rebellious parliament in October 1993, the officer corps has developed a taste for power and wants its own lobbyists in uniform to press for increased defense spending. As Krasnaya Zvezda, the official Defense Ministry daily, puts it, "The army has its own interests in lawmaking. So it should have its own people in the State Duma."

The roster of top-brass candidates begins with former Vice President and General Alexander Rutskoi, leader of the Derzhava (Great State) movement, and General Boris Gromov, onetime commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan and now No. 2 in the left-center coalition of Parliamentary Speaker Ivan Rybkin. With the drop in Yeltsin's popularity, putsch leaders are fashionable. The Communists have General Valentin Varennikov, a ring-leader of the 1991 coup who was acquitted by a Moscow court, while the "Power to the People" movement of former Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov has enlisted Lieut. Colonel Stanislav Terekhov, implicated in the 1993 hard-line revolt but freed in a parliamentary amnesty. The bloc of Russia's Democratic Choice-United Democrats claims dissident General Eduard Vorobyov, who refused to command army forces in Chechnya, while the "Our Home Is Russia" movement of Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin has General Lev Rokhlin, a hero of the Chechen war.

The general who has everyone standing at attention these days, though, is Alexander Lebed, former commander of Russia's 14th Army in the breakaway Trans-Dniestr region of the republic of Moldova, who resigned last June in a dispute with the Kremlin. The unspoiled, gruff-spoken Lebed is seen by many as Russia's dream candidate, a no-nonsense military man whose calls for order and "enlightened patriotism" have an appeal extending far beyond the political fringe of rabid nationalists. Indeed, with Lebed in the political arena, all bets are off on the outcome of the December parliamentary race and even the presidential contest in June 1996. Early opinion polls have shown the General could easily beat Yeltsin, Democratic maverick Grigori Yavlinsky or ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky in any head-to-head presidential contest.

Lebed so far has maneuvered better than anyone expected through Moscow's political labyrinth, shrewdly aligning himself with the once marginal Congress of Russian Communities. The organization, set up in 1992 to protect the human rights of the 25 million or so Russians living in the former Soviet republics, has gained national prominence by attracting politicians in search of a centrist base. The group has also provided a political refuge for Yuri Skokov, Yeltsin's former Security Council Secretary and a skilled behind-the-scenes power broker with ties to the country's military-industrial complex. Skokov and Lebed make a formidable combination, attractive to uncommitted voters troubled by the pace and direction of Kremlin economic policies. They may also garner votes that both Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democrats and the Communists have been wooing. Both parties were counting on a backlash vote against those parties with links to Yeltsin and to economic reforms that have pushed one in three Russians below the poverty line. But the Lebed-Skokov team provides a more attractive alternative to voters who reject Zhirinovsky's histrionic nationalism and buffoonish public image and fear the restoration of a Soviet-style regime if the Communists get back into power.

The way things have been going, having a general or two may not prove of much help to either Prime Minister Cherno myrdin or Parliamentary Speaker Ryb kin. They had hoped to cobble together a loyal parliamentary majority out of their Kremlin-sanctioned movements, but Ryb kin has not even been able to gain the support of his own Agrarian Party and has relied on his personal authority as the fourth-ranking leader in the country to enlist allies. Chernomyrdin's "Our Home Is Russia" has all the advantages of incumbency and support from powerful provincial officials, but it could suffer from its widespread image as the "party of bosses." In the movement's first major test at the polls, a gubernatorial race last month in Yeltsin's home region of Sverdlovsk, Chernomyrdin's man was trounced in a 2-to-1 vote by a local anti-Moscow secessionist candidate. If "Our Home Is Russia" cannot improve its showing by December, it will be bad news for Chernomyrdin. He might not be able to hold on to his post as Prime Minister, much less make a run for the presidency in June 1996.

Commander in Chief Yeltsin has so far kept quiet about his own battle plans, but Kremlin aides have hinted that if reform-minded candidates do poorly in the December race, the President might feel compelled to run again in June 1996 to ensure his policies are continued. Even if Yeltsin's ratings have plummeted, his aides believe the President could rally lost supporters if the alternative were Zhirinovsky. In fact, Yeltsin's position could be strengthened if no clear winners emerge from the December vote. In a weak and divided new State Duma, no amount of military discipline would be enough to create a stable majority able to counter Kremlin policies. The country could breathe easier on one score. A military putsch would hardly be possible if all the potential ringleaders are too busy fighting among themselves on the floor of the new legislature--unless, of course, they join together in one big military unit and decide to take over.