THE COUNTRY road out to Yaroslavl, where I went last year to test the mood before Russia's presidential election, has become one long colourful bazaar.
Instead of the usual washing, the villages are hung end to end with beach towels printed with parrots, sharks, the American flag and Mickey Mouse. Peasant women in headscarves and aprons are hawking the towels along with more predictable rural wares such as buckets of old potatoes and bunches of this season's radishes and spring onions.
I stopped and met my first communist voter. She was Antonina Fyodorovna, a pensioner in her early 60s and a trader in the new towel market.
"I don't recommend them, dear," she said "They're made in China and the colours run in the wash. Buy some potatoes instead. They're good and local."
It turned out that Antonina Fyodorovna was selling the towels because she could not survive on her pension of 150,000 roubles (£19) a month. "The mafia boys from Moscow bring them out here for us to sell," she said. "But they pay us kopecks. It's literally only enough to buy bread."
The old lady's bad experience of capitalism has driven her back into the arms of the party she has known all her life. On June 16th, Gennady Zyuganov, the presidential candidate for the communists, will get her vote.
However, historic Yaroslavl, 250 km north east of Moscow, defies the stereotype of the deeply conservative provincial city, stuck in the mud and dreaming of a return to the certainties of communism. In December's parliamentary election it produced one of the biggest votes in the country for Yabloko, the party of the market reformer, Gregori Yavlinsky, and the local opinion poll last month suggested that 30 per cent of voters would back Boris Yeltsin for President compared with 15 per cent for Mr Zyuganov.
That support is likely to be even stronger now that Mr Yeltsin has made visible efforts to end the war in Chechnya.
As in Russia as a whole, so in Yaroslavl, the political split seems to coincide with the generation divide. When talking to people on the street, you can be fairly sure that if your subject is under 50 years of age, he or she will be an anti communist. The once sleepy city is now alive with little kiosks run mostly by people in their 20s and 30s.
"I can't say that I'm living well," said Ella Vorontsova, a graduate in computer studies, is earning the equivalent of $100 a month selling drinks from a kiosk in the wall of one of the city's mediaeval towers. "But, since we've started reform, we might as well finish. At least I am young enough to have a hope of seeing the results."
In December, she voted for Yabloko, but this time she will back Mr Yeltsin to be sure to keep out the communists, who she thinks will be bad for business. This is despite the fact that the communists have unveiled an economic programme promising to preserve a mixed economy.
Roman Moiseyev, an engineering student was also planning to vote for Mr Yeltsin. "He's far from perfect," he said, "but he's our best guarantee of freedom. We lived for decades under the communists and we know who they are, however they try to repackage themselves. We don't want them back. The election will be close. If we young people do not take the trouble to vote, the older generation will vote for us.
The election may appear to beta two horse race between Mr Yeltsin; and Mr Zyuganov, neck and neck in the nationwide opinion polls, but there are other runners, including a dark horse with a track record of doing well after the pundits have discounted him. In Yaroslavl, I got a disturbing insight into how the extreme nationalist, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose party won the parliamentary election in 1993, could surprise us again.
Yaroslavl was preparing for "City Day", a local festival. Park workers were digging the flower beds on the orders of the mayor. About a dozen of them were taking a rest from their labours in the hot sunshine. They were in no hurry to get back to work as, they complained, they had not received any wages for months despite a preelection order from Mr Yeltsin that overdue salaries should be paid.
Only one of the men had made up his mind how he intended to vote. The others were still floating, like approximately half the Russian electorate.
"I'm for Zhirinovsky," said Alexander Zabelin, with a grin. "And what's wrong with that? The Germans had Hitler and see how well they live now."
Slowly, his friends began to take up the idea. "Yes, Zhirinovsky, why not?" said one, and then suddenly there was a chorus of "Zhirinovsky, Zhirinovsky, Zhirinovsky".