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The town of Zaraisk lies a little bit southeast of Moscow. In June the snow and mud are finally gone and Zaraisk is surrounded by lush, blue-green fields of grass, watered by a little stream, a tributary of the Oka River, that runs through the center of town. Zaraisk is 850 years old, older than Moscow itself, and if circumstances has turned out a little bit differently, Zaraisk might have been the great big capital of Russia, and Moscow a little town on the Moscow River, just a few miles to the northwest.
Even so, Zaraisk is a proud place, with its collection of churches and the old walls of its kremlin, or fort. This kremlin is not as big nor elaborate as the other Kremlin, but it has a simple, rustic beauty to it.
This was a big day in Zaraisk, as in all of Russia. The Russians were voting for president in the first round of the election, and at this point nobody was quite sure whether the winner would be the incumbent, Boris Yeltsin, or his challenger, Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist.
You could say that this was the New Russia's first genuine presidential election. There had been an earlier one, in 1991, when Russia had just transformed itself from the Soviet Union to something called the Russian Republic. Boris Yeltsin was elected president of that in a landslide. But now, five years later, the new and improved Russian Federation, democratic and capitalist, after a fashion, had emerged.
It was the voters of this Russian Federation who were choosing a president this day, and because it was a tightly contested election, for the first time ever, their votes, each and every one, would truly matter. Of course for most of this century, when Zaraisk was part of the Soviet Union, their votes didn't matter. The Communists were the only ones on the ballot. Even then, though, nearly everybody who was eligible went to the polls here. Voting has always been just something everybody does in Zaraisk, along with going to church, handling the weekend chores, or attending the meetings of the neighborhood improvement association. Voting's regarded as something responsible, a civic duty, and Zaraisk strikes you as a solid, no-nonsense, responsible sort of place.
So it wasn't just the candidates and issues in this election that produced the customary crowd at the precinct we visited in Shoe Factory Cafeteria Number Two. The registrars were busy all day with Zaraisk voters dressed in their Sunday best.
Mrs. Bernishkova, the precinct warden(who also runs the cafeteria), told us that in Zaraisk, election day is regarded as one of the most important days on the calendar. Mrs. Bernishkova and her volunteers dutifully checked the voting lists, but that was just a formality. You can tell that everybody knows everybody else here anyway. "If somebody doesn't show up to vote," she said, "the neighbors always go right over to check the house to make sure everybody's all right." Needless to say, voter turnout around here is close to 100 percent.
There were a couple of poll watchers on hand, along with the town cop. For the record, there were no apparant shenanigans.
Mrs. Bernishkova said they'd been using the cafeteria as a precinct polling place for about thirty years. They hadn't had a chance to do much remodeling since the old Soviet days. The customary statue of Lenin was gone, having been replaced on its pedestal by some potted plants. And they hadn't yet gotten around to painting out the old Communist hammer and sickle on the ballot box. They just turned the insignia to the wall.
The voting was secret, of course, and the ballots were paper, and it was all very much a family affair. Fathers and mothers brought their babes in arms right into the polling booth. The poll watchers and the town cop didn't seem to mind.
Mr. Lubov, who was towing his five-year-old son, said he wanted to show the boy how this thing called voting is done, "so he'll know all about it when he grows up."
Mrs. Sazonova, who parked her groceries from the market over in the corner while she went to mark her ballot, said, "If we're going to make life better for ourselves, it's up to us, and voting is part of it."
We left Zaraisk before the polls closed, after sampling some of Mrs. Bernishkova's sweet cakes, and we never did find out which candidate got the most votes here. But I know the winner in Zaraisk that day--Democracy.
######
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