I don't much like Yeltsin or what he's done, but that Congress is a horror, a national disgrace. It is impressive, the spring mud. Slithering in ankle-deep slime on what purports to be a street paved with blocks of cement, sympathetic thoughts turn to Napoleon and his Republican Guard floundering on the Smolensk Road. Turgenev, whose estate was south of here, wrote of stretches of six weeks or more when there was no thought of travel. But this is a seminal time in the life of the Russian countryside.
Life is ready to explode anew.
Daylight lingers past nine, returning rooks screech from the treetops, swollen buds spread a pregnant haze across the forests of birch and clattering tractors rush to turn the thawing soil for the brief growing season. But the similarity ends there. Unlike the rituals of fealty that the old elections were, this one seems to be viewed by many Russians as a critical milestone on their tortuous road, however unclear the purpose or uncertain the consequences. While few Russians expect that the vote will lead to any immediate change, many seem to anguish over the choice in a way they never have before. In the end it'll probably be Yeltsin.