THE dust has settled on what has been described as a victory for democracy, in the form of President Boris Yeltsin over communism, represented by Mr Gennady Zyuganov.
The truth, if one can get the full truth in Russia, is somewhat more complicated. In election campaigns, the truth in Russia, as elsewhere, is distorted to suit the candidacy of those seeking office.
A prime example was Mr Yeltsin's team's use to its advantage of the anniversary of the vicious suppression of a workers' uprising in Novochercassk in southern Russia.
This type of brutality was, the campaign workers attempted to portray, the type of thing that communists such as Mr Zyuganov would get up to if they regained power. In fact, Mr Zyuganov was not yet a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at the time the troops attacked the workers. Mr Yeltsin was.
Of those people I spoke to who voted for Mr Yeltsin in the second round last Sunday, some did so with the intention of making Russia democratic, others had the opposite view.
This column is being written in an apartment in a part of central Moscow which, now that the heat of summer has well and truly arrived, bears a resemblance to the narrower streets of the rive gauche in Paris.
There are literary connotations. The poet Marina Tsvetayava lived next door. Up the road at a distance of 300 metres or so lie the Patriarch's Ponds where, in Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita, the dramatic opening sees the head of the literary critic, Berlioz, roll down Malaya Bronnaya Street after he has slipped on oil and been hit by a tram.
Some of the old Russian intellectuals still live in this area.
My neighbours in the flat upstairs, Sergei and lrina, come from that stratum of former Soviet society. Sergei is a retired scientist and lrina has spent most of her life in literary circles.
Both voted in the first round for the liberal economist, Mr Grigory Yavlinsky. In the second round they cast their ballots for Mr Yeltsin, not so much in the interests of democracy, as to keep Mr Zyuganov out.
This couple have lived through the bad times, the war, the Stalin purges, the days of the "stukachi" or informers who played such a major part in the culture of their time.
They remember a popular song dedicated to the schoolboy Pavlik Morozov who became a hero because he informed the authorities of his father's activities as an "enemy of the people".
SERGEI and lrina don't like Mr Yeltsin, they voted for him as the lesser of two evils". They regard Mr Zyuganov as a nationalist rather than a communist, but the very label his party carries was enough to make them, however reluctantly, vote for Mr Yeltsin.
Recently I met another Yeltsin supporter, having heard that a finger of the late Tsar Nicholas II was in the hands of the Russian Orthodox church as a holy relic. The much-publicised finding of the bones of the imperial family at the bottom of a well-shaft in Yekaterinburg has failed to impress many Orthodox believers who maintain the real remains are elsewhere.
The whereabouts of the holy finger is a matter to be written about at another time but the political views of Father Nikon, a monk who deals with relics, are more pertinent to the question in hand.
He arrived at my flat in quite a dramatic manner. Like many people in the new Russia, he is obsessed with the modern electronic world. Concealed in his long black robes lie not only a mobile telephone but a pager as well.
To gain entry to my quarters he simply had to press the doorbell but that type of operation, to the new breed of Russian, is too simple to comply with.
Instead the austere monk, who had phoned earlier to ensure there was a bottle of vodka in the freezer compartment of the fridge, came to the door, rustled through the fastnesses of his robes, extracted the mobile, rang my number and summoned me to the door to admit him.
An unusual adjunct to his bearded reverence's, attire was a Soviet-style badge which proclaimed him as a "defender of the White-House parliament" against Mr Yeltsin's tanks in October 1993.
Did he vote for Zyuganov? I asked.
"No, I will never vote for Satan", came the reply.
He had voted for the President, he said, because he could not support the evil of communism.
Then the vodka flew in all directions. Toasts were given in the true Russian fashion and as the late twilight of the northern summer turned to its early dawn, songs were sung.
Songs of the White army which was defeated by the Reds in the 1920s. Some lines included references to "wiping out the Yids".
Father Nikon described himself as an "ultra", a denizen of the far right that has haunted Russia since the days of the Black Hundreds. Rasputin, I was confidentially informed, was a much-maligned man. He had almost cured the young. Tsarevitch of his haemophilia when the dirty "kommunyaki", the "commies", struck.
BY now the Catholics were getting the works, for despite the illusions of the faithful in Ireland about the "conversion of Russia", Rome is held by many Orthodox clerics in a regard similar to that held by the Rev Ian Richard Kyle Paisley.
Having extracted the whereabouts of the imperial finger from the reverend gentleman, who had, in ti meantime, spoken on his mobile to acquaintances across the continents, I felt it my duty to clear my accommodation of his presence and that of the two friends he had dragged along with him.
The following morning, in the company of a hangover of Russian proportions, I mused about the "victory of democracy".
On the previous day I had met Yeltsin voters who, for very different reasons, did not share the view that democracy had triumphed. I am sure there are millions more in this great land.
Those of you who have fallen into the trap of complacency should take the example of the Skibbereen Eagle of long ago. Keep your eyes on Tsar Boris and his followers. You may not be all that interested in them today, but the day may come when they will be interested in you.