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“However unpopular Yeltsin may have been, traditionalist loyalty was already being forcefully redirected toward the new powers of the presidency. There is a story that so clearly and beautifully illustrates this that I will recount it here, though I cannot, unfortunately, remember where I read it. A journalist was speaking with an old woman who lived in poverty. The woman was going on, tearing Yeltsin apart, while speaking wistfully of the Soviet regime. When the journalist asked her whom she would support in the upcoming presidential election, she answered, ‘Yeltsin’. ‘But what about Zyuganov?’ ‘When Zyuganov’s president, we’ll vote for Zyuganov.’ There were a great many such old women; in fact everyone, including both Yeltsin’s active opponents and the democrat-intellectuals, was to one degree or another an old lady of this kind. The fear of a change in power, of a return to revolutionary chaos, proved stronger than dissatisfaction with the government. Yeltsin’s supporters’ avowals that power would not be handed to the Communists even if they won the election, which in some countries would have stirred mass indignation, worked in the president’s favour in Russia.” — Dmitrii Furman