AT THE beginning of the election campaign in January of this year, the Communist Party candidate, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, was well ahead in the polls, President Yeltsin was languishing at 6 per cent, and the crazy neo fascist, Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky, was still hovering in the background.
But three men known locally as the "Third Force" seemed to represent the true sympathies of the people of Russia.
Now, on the eve of Russia's presidential election, the "Third Force" has dissipated into a weak semi coalition. But it could still become a factor it as expected, no candidate wins an overall majority on Sunday and a second round of voting is required on July 7th.
The three men involved have disparate political views. But the one issue which unites them is anti communism.
Mr Grigory Yavlinsky is an orthodox democrat. He agrees to some extent with the economic reforms of the Yeltsin administration but deplores their lack of democratic content.
Mr Yeltsin, he says, has the bloodiest hands in the Kremlin since Stalin.
Early in the campaign opinion polls, unreliable as they may be, made him the only candidate who could stop the communists. Then everything went wrong for Grigory Alexeyevich Yavlinsky.
He was virtually ignored by the state controlled television service, which threw its weight totally into propaganda for President Yeltsin.
Mr Yavlinsky began to make his own mistakes. His "arrogance" became legendary, although it must be said that at this correspondent's meetings with him this particular characteristic was not particularly noticeable.
He seemed, in fact, quite a diffident man, interested in Ireland and its future presidency of the European Union.
But his election campaign has been a disaster. Posters in Moscow show his face half blacked out and looking sinister. His name is written in print so small that it is impossible to read from a passing car. On television his diffidence and "shyness is such that no hard message is perceptible to the casual.
His success in a regional reform programme in the country's their city, Nizhny Novgorod, has been striking. But he has failed to get the message across to the rest of "Russia. Some of this is due to President Yeltsin's old style communist tactic of blacking out opponents from the mass media. Nonetheless, he remains in third place behind President Yeltsin and Mr Zyuganov.
The second member of the "Third Force" is the world's most famous eye surgeon, Mr Sviatoslav Fyodoroy. His particular programme is a mixture of capitalism and socialism - a shareholders democracy.
But he brings this concept to a conclusion which threatens the billionaires who hold a great deal of power in the "New Russia." He wants the workers in each enterprise to have shares in, and therefore votes on the boards of their companies.
His campaign, under the slogan, "Fyodorov a man of action", is on the verge of collapse.
The third man in the Third Force is Gen Alexander Lebed, former commander of the Russian Forces in Moldavia on the border with Romania.
At one stage he put himself forward as the Russian equivalent of Gen Augusto Pinochet, the Chilbean dictator He would he said establish order by drastic measures and eventually restore democracy.
If soundings of Russian opinion are to be relied on, Gen Lebed will finish fourth in Sunday's vote, and Dr Fyodorov fifth.
The likely scenario now is that after a first round in which Mr Yeltsin and Mr Zyuganov emerge as the main contenders, Gen Lebed and Mr Fyodorov will urge their supporters to support Mr Yeltsin in the second round while Mr Yavlinsky will simply retire from the contest.
