The election held at the close of a tumultuous decade would however not end the miserable plight of the more than 147 million people spread over 89 regions and 11 time zones that inhabit the Russian Federation.

The three months since the December 1999 elections to the State Duma was utilised by the anti-communist forces to conduct a high-pitched campaign, culminating in Putin's victory. As may be known, despite a near unity, the anti-Communist forces did not succeed in dislodging the Communists from dominating the Duma.

The months preceeding the Duma elections witnessed hectic parleys; working out of various permutations and combinations - all aimed at influencing the outcome of the Presidential elections.

The Unity Party was formed in September 1999. Headed by Emergency situations Minister Sergei Shoigu and backed by Putin-Yeltsin and cohorts, the Party has no regional base or any concrete programme worth the name. The Party's leaders and governmental officials and the governors of regions are dependent on aid flows from Kremlin. Initially, the presidents or governors of 31 Russian regions signed the document announcing the formation of the bloc.

For the Kremlin, the decision to construct a party around regional leaders is only logical. Regional governors control the patronage and power in their region, and can do much to aid a party or presidential candidate.

The signatories to the Unity's charter also includes a few surprises. Kursk Governor Alexander Rutskoi is one of them. Rutskoi was Yelstin's Vice President before he teamed up with the Congress of People's Deputies against dictatorial action of the President during the 1993 standoff. He paid for it with a short stay at the Lefortovo prison. Another astonishing figure was Tula Governor, Vasily Starodubtsev. Strodubtsev was a member of the emergency committee that took power in August 1991 unseating President Mikhail Gorbachev. Interestingly, while other factions are courting the richer regions, Unity appears to have drawn the economically weak.

The Unity struck with regional governors dangerous deals that formed the backbone of the bloc. For votes Unity needs the support of the governors. As most of the governors represent Russia's more economically backward regions, this support was won through the promise of economic incentive which could only be granted at the expense of IMF austerity measure of Russia's wealthier, OVR (Fatherland-All Russia) members-aligned regions. OVR was seizing on Unity's grave weakness: its connection to the Kremlin. In addition, OVR had launched a full-scale effort to portray Unity as a product of Boris Berezovsky. Berezovsky is the most unpopular in Russia today.

In addition, OVR had launched a full-scale effort to portray Unity as a product of Boris Berezovsky. If there is one person unpopular in Russia it is Berezovsky. Thus President has got rid of this man after assuming power as acting President.

The Kremlin is playing an ancient and dangerous Russian game, pitting the regions against each other and risking a turn against the center.

OVR is built on two bases- the All Russia group of governors and Fatherland party – and has two strong politicians at its helm, Moscow Mayor Yuri Lluzhkov and former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. Since August 1999, Primakov emerged as the OVR bloc’s presidential contender. Primakov had a long history with the security agency and its successor agency before becoming Prime Minister in Yeltsin’s cabinet in 1996. As Prime Minister, Primakov packed the administration with former security men, a policy that, after a brief reversal during Sergei Stepashin’s term, was carried on by Vladimir Putin. Primakov earned popularity with his programme of foreign policy, economic policy and defending democracy.

The anti-corruption campaign initiated by Primakov after being appointed prime minister in the wake of last summer's economic collapse, most notably targeted oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Under Primakov, Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov was given a free hand to investigate Berezovsky's economic crimes. Skuratov proceeded to open the Aeroflot, Mabetex and Fimaco investigations. Berezovsky was sacked from his post as secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States in March 1999. Primakov himself was sacked two months later, both to check his growing independence and to ease tensions with the West over Kosovo in order to win a new IMF loan. Moreover, he committed the crime of carrying the anti-corruption campaign into the Kremlin "Family".

Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia(LDPR), recently re-invented as the "Zhirinovsky Bloc." Tainted as it is by past support for the Yeltsin administration and by rumors that it is now under the influence of hated oligarch Boris Berezovsky and his allies, Zhirinovsky's party fared badly this time around.

As opposed to these parties and blocs, the Communist Party of Russian Federation(KPRF) has been emerging as the country's most consistent political party. In the 1995 elections the KPRF won the largest bloc of seats in the Duma polling 22.3 per cent votes. An expression of the Russian electorates' outrage over Yeltsin's abortive economic reforms and war in Chechnya, those election results shocked the Kremlin and its backers into an intense campaign to retain the presidency. The West supported Yeltsin with what could only be interpreted as a politically motivated IMF loan to Russia, while the country's oligarchs financed the Yeltsin campaign. Yeltsin failed to secure victory in the first round. This time the Party's candidate secured 29.54 percent of the votes.

Economy in A Mess

The current Russian GDP, $160 billion at current exchange rates, is roughly 55 per cent of what it was in 1989 and declined by 44 per cent since 1991. It fell by 4.6 per cent in 1998 and by around 5-6 per cent in 1999. From an external debt of $143.9 billion in the beginning of 1999, it officially rose to about $150 billion by July 1999 and was expected to stand at $166.2 billion at the beginning of 2000.

Judging merely by statistics, the Russian economy is in grim shape- and these numbers are in all likelyhood doctored to gloss reality. The Russian economy is not governed by a coherent and rational economic model, let alone by the rule of law. The inevitably contradictory information emanating from Russian government, banking system and industries are at best mere guesses, and at worst outright lies. Estimates and forecasts based on those figures are equally suspect. That said, it could be inferred that things are even worse than officials would like to admit.Capital flight is one of the best indicators of the poor health of the economy. Russia's former envoy to international lending institution Mikhail Zadornov, estimates that more than $1.5 billion in Russian profits are sheltered abroad monthly. The Russian Taxation and Duties Ministry puts the annual figure for capital flight at between $25 and $30 billion. A special committee organized by Our Home is Russia determined that over $20 billion fled Russia in 1998. Russian Central Bank estimates that more than $133 billion fled Russia between 1992 and 1997, while the Russian Ministry of economics estimates $230 billion over the same period, while Russia's Troika Dialog investment bank has determined that up to $500 billion may have been taken out of Russia during that period. According to Interior Ministry's estimates about 70 per cent of the money leaving Russia are profits of Russian exporters seeking to avoid paying taxes.

The state of the Russian economy is reflected in the condition of its approximately 1,700 banks. Only a miniscule group of about 50, several of which got their start with state support during the Soviet period, have made large profits in recent years due to their political and economic connections. Powerful banks play key roles in all but Boris Berezovsky's Logovaz group. With the exception of Inkombank, these institutions bankrolled President Boris Yeltsin's reelection campaign in 1996.

Obtaining status as a favored, authorized bank is highly dependent on the political connections of the bank's management and is widely believed to have fostered corruption. In 1996, for example, the watchdog state Control Chamber found that $4.4 billion in state funds intended - though never legally budgeted - for restoration projects in Chechnya and funneled through favored commercial banks wound up in the pockets of government officials.

Illicit banking practices are widespread. Seventy-one per cent of Russian banks, according to a 1997 report of the US Centre for Advanced Strategic Studies that drew heavily on FBI data, violated Russian Federation banking legislation in 1995. The report also claims that one half of Russia's 256 largest banks have ties with organized crime because they present lucrative targets for extortion and money laundering.

Some banks, however, have spread their political and financial support among several major leaders (notables among them are: Boris Yeltsin, Tatyana Dyachenko, Yeltsin's's daughter and official image adviser; Viktor Chernomyrdin, former prime minister; Anatoly Chubais, first deputy prime minister; Yegor Gaydar, former acting prime minister; Alexander Lebed, retired general and former Security Council Secretary; Yuri Luzhkov, mayor of Moscow; Zhirinovsky, leader of LDPR; Grigory Yazvlinsky, leader of the Yabloko).

Crime

The Ministry of Internal Affairs estimates that in 1996 there were 8000 criminal gangs, 300 of them with international operations. It has further estimated that 40 per cent of private business, 60 per cent of state-owned enterprises and more than half of the banks are controlled by organized crime syndicates. The majority of private enterprises are compelled to pay protection money of up to 30 per cent of their profits to the organized crime. While market reform and liberalization according to IMF-WB prescription breeds unbridled corruption and criminalisation of politics, Russia depicts much more. Today organized crime includes thieves in law, officials and entrepreneurs who began operations illegally during the last days of Soviet Union and flourish with the blessings of those in power.

Ethnic Problem

From the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the renewed war in Chechnya today, the question has been: can Moscow hold the 89 regions that constitutes Russia? Will the central authority prevail or is split in store for the dozens of republics, that Russia assimilated over the past 400 years?

Though none have yet followed Chechnya in proclaiming secession, Russia's regional governors have been holding out such threats during the course of the past nine years. Some have usurped power; 70 per cent of the regional laws and all the charters in the North Caucasus violate federal law; others simply have taken various degrees of control over Courts and banks, tax laws and rights of citizens. Thirty regions have lodged territorial claims - against each other. The regions have not so much rebelled as protested. Secessionist tendencies have stemmed generally from Moscow's failure to meets its obligations. The federal government's persistent failure to meet its financial obligations to the regions sparked a series of tax revolts. Further, the economic crash of August 1998 generated economic separatism. These protests were not aimed at a division but at ensuring survival.

Russian experience with bourgeois democracy has indeed been curiously intriguing. Boris Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic in the first and only such election in the history of the USSR in June 1991 by virtue of momentary change in the constitution by the then president Mikhail Gorbachov. Forcing western-dictated economic reforms Yeltsin soon found himself at odds with the Congress of Peoples Deputies. Till mid-1992 when he appointed Yegor Gaidor as the Prime Minister, he was both President and Prime Minister. Yeltsin was to fabricate Russia's new political rule as he went along. By March 1993 Yeltsin had declared "Special presidential rule" and the Congress of People's Deputies had responded with the threat of impeachment. In a referendum held in a surcharged atmosphere Yeltsin prepared the Russian Constitution arrogating to himself dictatorial powers. He dissolved the Congress of People's Deputies in September 1993 and called for the election of a new parliament.

The ensuing standoff with Deputies ended on October 4 when, on the behest of Kremlin, Russian troops shelled and stormed the parliament building killing thousands. December 1993 saw Yeltsin empowering himself with a new constitution that gave sanction to his authoritarian powers. With the President's office being overriding powers, the Duma was turned into nothing more than a debating society.

The Putin regime:

Forced to abdicate office due to failing health, Yeltsin gambled by choosing the 47-year old Putin, a political non-entity till recently, as his heir apparent. An indebted Putin gratefully paid back. Immediately after being sworn as the acting President on the December 31 1999, Putin banned all investigations into corruption charges against Yeltsin and his family.

The months preceeding the elections saw intensified army activity in Chechenya. 90,000 people were reportedly killed before the situation in Chechnya was brought under. The fighting is still going on as the Western powers have put their weight behind the Chechen separatists. In the local media, the action was portrayed as a crusade for the Russians.