THE euphoria of the election over, the vote declared free and fair but the overwhelming media bias strongly criticised by observers, it is now back to business in Russia. It is most unlikely, however, that it will be business as usual.
Questions are still unanswered about President Yeltsin's health, the state of the economy, the future role of Gen Alexander Lebed, the need not to antagonise 30 million communist voters and the path towards democracy and economic reform.
Mr Yeltsin's health is still very much in question, although he looked much better during his victory address on television yesterday than he had done on his two short previous appearances during his mysterious absence from public commitments in the final week of the campaign. But all three of the clips shown were recorded by the official Kremlin camera crew.
The health of the economy is less mysterious. Inflation in June ran at 1.2 per cent, the lowest since the move towards a market economy, and the rouble has become relatively stable. But Russia's election campaign has been to a large extent, dominated by what literary critics call the "suspension of disbelief."
The Yeltsin camp hammered home Harold Macmillan's old message. "You've never had it so good." Massive promises were made, back wages were paid, more than $1 billion were sequestered from the reserves of the Central Bank, calling its independence into question.
Other economic indicators point to a possible crisis later this year unless tough measures are taken. Tax revenues are running at 60 per cent so far this year and at 50 per cent in recent months, as factories delayed payment until the result of the elections became clear. The banking system is in a critical condition and industrial production is falling once again.
NOT surprisingly, most of these problems have been put on the back burner during the long election campaign and if Mr Yeltsin's vast array of promises is implemented, rising inflation could be added to the list.
All this was done to keep the communists out of power. But the instant analyses of a victory for democracy, in the form of Mr Yeltsin, over communism, personified by Mr Gennady Zyuganov, are very much off the mark.
Paradoxically, Mr Yeltsin's victory will probably bring more communists into the Russian government than at any time since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
They will not, of course, enter the new cabinet as "communists", or as members of a coalition government, but as "professionals" who are capable of working in specific spheres under the control of Mr Yeltsin, who was himself, after all, a far higher ranking communist than Mr Zyuganov in Soviet times.
One man already being mentioned is Mr Aman Tuleyev, who withdrew his candidacy in the first round and called on his voters to support Mr Zyuganov. There are precedent's already in place.
Mr Sergei Kovafyov, a former gulag prisoner, was sacked by Mr Yeltsin as Commissioner for Human Rights after his criticism of the conduct of the Chechen war and replaced by his communist near namesake Mr Valentin Kovalyov, who is now Minister for Justice. Similar appointments are likely to follow.
Such moves are unlikely to appease Mr Zyuganov or other leading members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). They may have lost the election but they have the support of a considerable segment of the population and in certain regions, notably the industrial cities of southern Siberia and the vast tracts of territory to the south and west of Moscow known as the Red Belt", they form the majority.
AS a result of the campaign, Russian politics is more polarised than ever. At the outset in January, when Mr Yeltsin's popularity rating was running in single figures, there were hopes that the country might divide along democratic lines, but Mr Yeltsin's advisers were quick to see that his only chance of victory was if he was pitted against a communist opposition.
Aided by a media which was compliant to the point of obsequiousness, the presidential team set out to make it a two horse race. Mr Grigory Yavlinsky, a liberal and democratic economist, though far ahead of Mr Yeltsin in the polls, was successfully sidelined in a barrage of publicity which has been strongly criticised by foreign observers. Mr Yavlinsky, more cerebral than earthy in character, compounded the issue by running an abysmal campaign on the occasions he managed to get access to the media.
As a result, Mr Yeltsin has regained a monopoly on power at the cost of giving the communists a monopoly on opposition. The day when government and opposition are in democratic hands seems a long way off.
There are also fault lines within the camps of Mr Yeltsin and Mr Zyuganov. As a loser, Mr Zyuganov can expect opposition from within the KPRF, particularly from those such as the speaker of the State Tuma, MrGennady Seleznyov, and the party's eminence grise Mr Anatoly Lukyano.
Sacking some of his closest and most unsavoury aid such as the defence minister Mr Pavel Grachev and former KGB general Alexander Korzhakov, the reported head of the "kitchen cabinet," was the price Mr Yeltsin had to pay for gaining the vital support of Gen Lebed, who had finished third in the first round of the presidential elections.
Appointed as Mr Yeltsin's security chief, Gen Lebed is something of a loose cannon, to put it mildly. He has made frighteningly right wing statements on foreigners and on religious minorities, only to retract them later. He is also on record as saying his loyalty is to Russia and not to Mr Yeltsin and that he is "allergic to former members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union."
As a former Central Committee member, Mr Yeltsin is not the sort of man who tolerates possible rivals, and tensions between the two men are expected to rise in the future.
With the President's health in question, Gen Lebed has dramatically grabbed the role of heir apparent. Rumours abound that the general will be sent to settle the Chechen problem, an appointment similar in British terms to that of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in the bad old days.