Russia’s New Revolution: Libel Suits : Litigation: Political bad boy Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky wins an award for being called a ‘fascist.’ Others are taking their fights out of the streets and into the courts.

MOSCOW —  A year after President Boris N. Yeltsin dissolved Parliament, triggering a bloody revolt that left 143 people dead, the libel suit has replaced the Kalashnikov rifle as the chief instrument of political struggle in Russia.

On Thursday, ultranationalist lawmaker Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky won a libel suit against Yegor T. Gaidar, the architect of Yeltsin’s free-market economic reforms, who had called Zhirinovsky “the most popular fascist” in Russia.

After reviewing evidence that included Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” Zhirinovsky’s book, “The Last Dash South,” and the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a Moscow municipal court ruled that Zhirinovsky had been wronged.

The three judges ordered Gaidar and his publisher, the newspaper Izvestia, to pay 1 million rubles in damages. The award was worth $435 at Thursday’s exchange rate.

In another courtroom on the other side of Moscow, a leader of the old Parliament also won a minor victory Thursday in a libel suit against his old enemy, Yeltsin.

In the English- and French-language editions of his new biography, “The Struggle for Russia,” Yeltsin writes that the “fascist” Iona I. Andronov would likely have been appointed foreign minister had the October, 1993, uprising by hard-liners succeeded.

Russia has not forgotten the 20 million or more Soviet citizens who perished during World War II, and calling someone a fascist here is like branding him a Nazi.

Andronov, who lost much of his family to starvation during the Nazi siege of Leningrad, immediately filed suit against Yeltsin and his three Western publishers, including Random House.

“For my whole life, fascists have meant scum to me,” he said. “There can be no worse insult.”

The British publisher Harper Collins has already apologized to Andronov and promised to correct the error in future editions, according to a letter Andronov said he received from the publisher’s solicitors. In the Russian edition of the memoirs, Andronov is described as a “militarist.”

On Thursday, the 60-year-old former foreign correspondent marched out of a courthouse on Partisan Street in Kuntsevo, the district in western Moscow where Yeltsin lives, with a summons for the president or his representatives to appear in court.

If Yeltsin fails to show up, Andronov said, it will mean “he is not only a slanderer, but a coward as well.”

The president’s press service had no comment on the lawsuit.

That Russia’s vitriolic ideological battles are being waged in court instead of on the streets represents a great leap forward from a year ago, when mobs of nationalists and Communists brawled with riot police, and Yeltsin sent tanks to bombard the White House Parliament building.

Today, Yeltsin is on cordial terms with the new Parliament elected nine months ago, and the crowds that gather on Moscow streets are there to buy and sell stock shares.

The Russian economy, though frighteningly feeble, appears to be stabilizing. Inflation was 4.1% in August, the lowest rate since reforms began in 1992. And the average Russian monthly wage jumped to about $116, a 46% increase since June.

Yet many Russians remain disillusioned with Yeltsin for using tanks to fight his political battles, and disgusted at their government’s seeming inability to curb crime, corruption and the growing inequality between rich and poor.

The malaise is evident in recent public opinion polls, such as a Vesti television survey that found that only 19% of respondents considered Russia’s leaders to be democrats.

Still, no Soviet leader would have allowed a political enemy to drag him into court.

Now political foes of all stripes are routinely resorting to lawsuits to defend their honor.

It is not hard to win, as the burden of proof is on the defendant. For example, the mayor of Moscow, Yuri M. Lushkov, won a slander suit last year against former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who had said city officials were building themselves dachas with public funds.

Gorbachev could not furnish proof of Lushkov’s alleged corruption, and he lost. He was ordered to apologize and fined the equivalent of 3 cents for failure to show up in court. Lushkov won at least eight other libel suits last year.

In the Zhirinovsky case, the court found that Gaidar had not managed to prove that the bad boy of Russian politics was really “the most popular fascist” in the land.

The three-judge panel rejected a last-minute attempt to introduce Zhirinovksy’s statements about Hitler into evidence.

The court found that Zhirinovsky, leader of the largest party in the Russian Duma, the lower house of Parliament, had suffered “moral damage” as a result of Gaidar’s article, an analysis of Zhirinovsky’s ideology that was published in May. Izvestia was also ordered to print a retraction.

Gaidar’s lawyer, Genry Reznik, said he would appeal the decision.