In the context of Russia's economic collapse and the disregard with which its views on Iraq were treated by the United States and the United Kingdom, the voters of St Petersburg have shown remarkable maturity in supporting liberal, pro-western candidates. The murder of a leading politician, Ms Galina Starovoitova, has been posited by many as the galvanising factor in Russia's second city, but the reality is more complicated. Ms Starovoitova's opposition to corruption was matched only by her bravery. These qualities cost her life in the course of a local election campaign which was, even by current Russian standards, an extremely nasty one. Some politicians with whom she had been associated had, however, less than perfect records on corruption and this was obviously recognised by the city's voters. Her political grouping managed to win just a single seat on the council of a city whose population is more than five million.
The voters chose instead to throw their support behind the parties of Mr Yuri Boldyrev and Mr Grigory Yavlinsky. Mr Boldyrev has been a stern fighter against corruption on a local level while Mr Yavlinsky is one of the few national leaders on the democratic side to have escaped allegations of corruption. For voters with little experience in free elections, the people of St Petersburg have demonstrated a political wisdom absent in many so-called "developed" democracies. But the signs from elsewhere in Russia are far from optimistic.
The Duma's decision to put off once again its ratification of the START2 treaty was one of the entirely predictable responses to the American and British air strikes on Iraq. Dominated as it is by a communist-nationalist alliance, little else could have been expected. In Russia's current political and economic state the Duma elections slated for the autumn of 1999 are likely to give the communists and nationalists an even stronger hand. Some communists have recently shown a greater propensity towards Great-Russian chauvinism than even their nationalist allies. The communist party has, for example, refused to condemn one of its more extreme members for making viciously anti-Semitic statements. Insidious fascist and racist literature is widely sold throughout Russia and is gaining a wide audience.
Symbolically, and symbols have always been important in Russia, the Duma has voted to re-install a massive statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the Polish communist who founded the soviet secret police, in the very centre of Moscow. A school in the southern Urals town of Chelyabinsk has, in the past week, installed a bust of Stalin, the first to be seen publicly in Russia since Nikita Khrushchev's campaign of denunciation against the former dictator. More significantly the powerful and popular mayor of Moscow has launched a campaign to gain seats in the Duma in 1999 and be elected president in 2000. At the recent inauguration of his new political party "Fatherland", Mr Yuri Luzhkov called for the re-nationalisation of state companies and an about-turn on economic reforms. He is not the only politician to have become disillusioned with the failed economic policies urged by western academic economists.