RIGHT across the largest country 09 earth, from the far eastern territories near Alaska to St Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland, Russian citizens went to the polls in their millions.
They voted, too, at embassies throughout the world. There were even two votes cast from outside the planet by the cosmonauts, Mr Yuri Onifrenko and Mr Yuri Usachev, aboard the Mir space station.
Remote reindeer herders voted in the northern tundra, luckier people went to the polls in the sub-tropical resorts of the Black Sea. In a country which stretches over 11 time zones, voting was over in the east when it was only 9 a.m. in the Kaliningrad enclave on the Baltic Sea.
In Moscow, in the rain, voters turned up in their Sunday best, men with stiff, ill fitting suits, some bearing rows of medals won in the Great Patriotic War as it is known here (the second World War), and women in brightly coloured dresses,
From an early stage there were jittery statements from the Yeltsin camp that the poll was lower than expected and by early evening the Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, had made an appeal to voters to go to the polls. At Yeltsin campaign headquarters an election analyst, Mr Vyacheslav Volkov, said the news from the polling stations was "distressing".
At the same time as the edgy Yeltsin acolytes were expressing their worst fears, most voters outside a polling station in the North Eastern suburb of Ismailovo told journalists they had supported Mr Yeltsin.
In the Perovo and Preobrazhenski regions of the capital, voting was monitored by Irish observers Senator Brian Hayes (FG), Mr Tommy Broughan TD (Lab), and Senator Eddie Bohan (FF). At the seven polling stations to which this correspondent accompanied them there was a steady flow of voters. The most striking aspect, however, was the absence of young people at the polls.
Most voters were elderly or middle aged, a group which, pollsters had indicated, were more likely to support the communist candidate, Mr Gennady Zyuganov, than President Yeltsin.
Supporters of Mr Yeltsin and of Mr Zyuganov had observers at all the stations visited, as did Mr Vladimir Bryntsalov, an eccentric billionaire who says he owns between 15 and 20 Mercedes cars and has sex three times a day." All of Mr Bryntsalov's observers were women. At one station a young man represented the ultra rightwinger, Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
During the campaign there were accusations that the vote would be rigged but representatives of all parties present in the Perovo region were satisfied that things were running in a smooth and orderly fashion.
One person who was thoroughly dissatisfied, however, was the liberal candidate, Mr Grigory Yavlinsky, angered by media coverage biased in favour of Mr Yeltsin. This election is not free, fair or democratic. It is like an election held in the days of Leonid Brezhnev," he said.
Mr Yeltsin, voting in the affluent Krylatskoye region of western Moscow, said he was sure of victory and that the communists had no chance. Mr Zyuganov, not surprisingly, said the opposite but announced he was prepared to accept the people's verdict.
