CONTRIBUTORS

While Bill Clinton and Bob Dole jockey for position in the November election, another contest is much closer and perhaps even more significant. In a few weeks, Gennadi Zyuganov and Boris Yeltsin will face off in the second presidential election ever held in Russia. The choice is so stark, and the result so important, that we decided to cover the campaign as thoroughly as we would an American presidential race.

"I was impressed with how willing the people were to talk openly about the issues and the candidates," says TIME's chief political correspondent, MICHAEL KRAMER. For two weeks, Kramer and veteran Moscow reporter YURI ZARAKHOVICH followed Yeltsin around the country while Washington correspondent JAMES CARNEY, returning to his old posting in Russia, tracked Zyuganov. Back in Moscow, correspondent SALLY DONNELLY and stringer CONSTANCE RICHARDS filed background reports, picture editor MARK RYKOFF directed a team of 10 photographers and Polish journalist RYSZARD KAPUSCINSKI, a longtime Soviet watcher, returned to a much changed Moscow to take the city's pulse. Coordinating operations was Moscow bureau chief JOHN KOHAN, who drew on eight years' experience in Russia to write an essay about whether democracy will ever be possible there.

The result of this team effort is the 23-page special report in this week's issue.

P.F. BENTLEY was one of only a handful of insiders who knew what was coming when Bob Dole announced his surprise resignation from the Senate last week. Any other photojournalist would have regarded this scoop as an incredible stroke of luck. In this case, luck had nothing to do with it. Over the past few months Bentley, one of America's most accomplished campaign photographers, has been at Dole's side during most of the candidate's waking hours, as he was with Clinton during the last campaign. This extraordinary access comes partly because Bentley never gets in the way, partly because he never, ever reveals what he hears, and partly because what he sees through his camera invariably tells a powerful story. "His instincts are unerring, almost prescient," says TIME picture editor Michele Stephenson. The proof, in case anyone still has any doubt: Bentley's poignant photo essay in this week's issue detailing what are probably the most remarkable 48 hours in Dole's political career.