The State Duma is unlike most parliaments. In the hall you can buy a set of Japanese china or a bottle of vodka or a packet of aspirin or a super zoom-lens Canon camera or, a must for any prominent Russian, the Encyclopaedia of Pistols and Revolvers.

It is believed you can buy votes, too and the smart money now says Sergei Kiriyenko will just squeeze through the Duma vote on his proposed prime ministership.

Most of the mass circulation Russian dailies have been carrying articles alleging that the cost of the Duma's support will be $6,000 per deputy in cash, the construction of a parliamentary centre even more luxurious than the current Duma and the procurement of larger apartments for the honourable members.

None of the deputies I spoke to yesterday admitted to being offered anything for their votes by Mr Yeltsin or his associates, but many have every reason to avoid the dissolution their rejection of Mr Kiriyenko would cause.

The pressure on some deputies is immense. The woman who runs the pharmacy counter in the hall told me that last week the demand for Stresstabs, the "vitamin formula for people who burn the candle at both ends", was enormous.

An election would end the political careers of many of the 450 deputies. The man with most to lose is Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the flamboyant neo-fascist leader of the bizarrely-named Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.

Mr Zhirinovsky, who stunned pundits by becoming a major force in Russian politics in 1993, has seen his star wane dramatically in recent years. An election could destroy him and his party in one fell swoop.

There is no doubt therefore that Mr Zhirinovsky's 50 deputies will support the Yeltsin line. This is what they have always done in crunch votes in the past, and they have even more reason than usual for doing so once more on this occasion.

One "Liberal Democrat", Alexander Vengerovsky, was pretty straight about it in the Duma yesterday: "I voted against Kiriyenko last Friday even though I was in Prague. Zhirinovsky had my voting card then, but I will have my own card next Friday and I will vote for Kiriyenko."

Mr Vengerovsky stopped nine bullets outside his apartment in February 1996 but survived. He explained the assassination attempt this way: "Zhirinovsky in those days was under control. People said he was paid [by Yeltsin]. I had to be tamed and it was easier to kill me, but like everything here it was poorly planned and badly carried out."

As far as bribery for Friday's vote was concerned Mr Vengerovsky simply said it was not an issue because Mr Yeltsin and his associates had no money left. "I think Kiriyenko will be elected on Friday and Russia will be no better or no worse off. He is young and rich, though, so he might need to steal less than the others did," he said.

Zhirinovsky's people would miss the Duma. In the restaurant a deputy or an official can sit down to a very good lunch at prices extremely low in comparison to those set by market forces.

From yesterday's menu, for example, for the equivalent of £7 one might have started with malossol caviar, had filet of sturgeon garni for a main course and washed the lot down with a full bottle of champagne. On a deputy's salary of £700 per month such a luxurious meal would be out of the question in the commercial restaurants of the city.

One deputy who knows more about bribery and corruption in politics is Yuri Shchekochikhin of the democratic Yabloko party led by Grigory Yavlinsky. In the Brezhnev era Shchekochikhin was a famous investigative journalist with Literaturnaya Gazeta, relentlessly and fearlessly exposing bribery and corruption in the Soviet power structure.

"Naturally they haven't come to me offering bribes. I'd be the last one they would approach," he said. He felt some approaches could have been made but in any event his party's 45 members would solidly oppose Kiriyenko's nomination. "We will not be voting against Kiriyenko. We will be voting against the President. One cannot treat society the way he does. One cannot threaten parliament or try to buy parliament the way he does."

Farther down the oak-panelled corridor Sergei Budazhapov stopped on his way to a meeting. A communist from the Asian region of Buryatia, as far from Moscow as Dublin is from New York, he was determined to vote against Kiriyenko. He, too, said he had not been approached to sell his vote. "If they offered me money I would take it and give it to the party," he said with a smile, quickly adding: "That was said in jest".

His communist colleague, Mikhail Tarantsov, from Volgograd (or as he called it Stalingrad) was convinced deputies from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, with 135 seats the largest bloc in the Duma, would be unswerving in their opposition to Mr Yeltsin's candidate.

Even if they do join Yabloko their combined votes will come to 185 out of 450, and with a social-democratic wing emerging to challenge the orthodox communists in the party there is no guarantee the KPRF vote will not split.

If the Duma agrees to a secret ballot in which party members could break ranks without being seen, then Mr Kiriyenko's success would appear to be inevitable.

One orthodox communist, the former Soviet prime minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, pledged the 43 votes of his People's Power group to Kiriyenko yesterday in the first indication of a swing towards Mr Yeltsin's man.

The President's real trump card in the final vote is that, according to the constitution, he must dissolve the Duma if it fails to support Mr Kiriyenko on Friday. He can then install the prime minister without parliamentary approval and go on to rule by decree until the next Duma is elected.

The thought of such a scenario, in which Mr Yeltsin could rule without checks or balances for up to three months, is something that could persuade many of the more honest opposition deputies to support Mr Kiriyenko this time.