The battle for the governorship of the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk may seem unimportant when compared to President Yeltsin's problems in securing confirmation in the Duma for his prime ministerial nominee, Mr Sergei Kiriyenko, but Sunday's vote could end the presidential hopes of Gen Alexander Lebed.
The crisis over the prime ministership has tended to obscure the fact that the dominant factor in Russian politics at present is the race for the presidency. Elections will be held in the year 2000 and preliminary skirmishes are under way.
In Krasnoyarsk ostensibly the vote on Sunday is for the local governorship, but on the broader canvas it's all about the presidential chances of Gen Lebed, the man who more than anyone else helped President Yeltsin gain re-election in 1996. The gruff general was also instrumental in ending the horrific war in Chechnya.
On Sunday Gen Lebed faces the most important vote of his political life. If he fails to be elected governor he admits that his career will come to an end, and at this stage he looks like a loser.
The latest poll from Krasnoyarsk, issued yesterday by the semi-official Itar-Tass news agency, shows Gen Lebed with 26 per cent of the vote and trailing the city's pro-Yeltsin incumbent governor, Mr Valery Zubov, who is running at 44 per cent. The communist candidate, Mr Pyotr Romanov, was third with 20 per cent.
On another level there is a race between entertainment personalities. The French movie star, Alain Delon, is on Gen Lebed's side. Moscow's Mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov, who is a contender for the presidency in 2000, has arrived with Russia's ageing popular singer, Iosif Kobzon, to back Mr Zubov.
The Russian singer appears to have the edge over the French actor. This could be explained by the fact that Delon arrived in Krasnoyarsk only at noon yesterday and offered the opinion that Gen Lebed could do for Russia what Gen de Gaulle did for France. Addressing a crowd of Gen Lebed's supporters, his command of Russian limited his contribution to: "Hello, it's me."
Delon's popularity in Russia is phenomenal. Iosif Kobzon, on the other hand, may not be as famous internationally as an entertainer but there are good reasons for this. Many countries have refused him entry visas because of his alleged connections with the Russian mafia. But at home he is popular.
"Lebed is dangerous for Russia," Mr Luzhkov has said. Certainly authoritarian in manner, Gen Lebed has raised some eyebrows in the past by attacking foreign influence in Russia and by describing Mormon missionaries as "scum". But Mr Luzhkov's credentials on human rights and tolerance of ethnic minorities are hardly impressive. During the curfew which followed Mr Yeltsin's shelling of the parliament in October, the mayor ran thousands of non-Russians, particularly traders from Azerbaijan, out of town without ceremony.
Even today people found on the streets of Moscow without their internal passports and documents, which permit them to live in the capital, can be arrested and held in custody for up to 30 days.
If Gen Lebed's hopes of the presidency end on Sunday, Mayor Luzhkov's will grow considerably. But there are other candidates. One of them could even be the incumbent himself. Mr Yeltsin is forbidden by the constitution from contesting a third term and he has already announced that he will not run. But some lawyers regard his current term as his first rather than his second and Mr Yeltsin has, on occasion, been known to change his mind.
