- Putin lacks Yeltsin's machismo but the poor love him,
says Julius Strauss, in Govorilovskoye.
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- Stumbling through the frozen mud and snow of the half-abandoned
village of Govorilovskoye, Viktor Novikov was in no doubt about today's
Russia.
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- "Life is terrible," he said yesterday. "The
pensions are a pittance and a single loaf costs a fortune. I plant potatoes
and cucumbers in the summer and put them away, otherwise I would have starved
to death."
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- In the old days, by his own account, Viktor, 65, lived
like a king. The village had a kolkhoz - a collective farm with tractors,
barns and hundreds of animals - where most of the population of 350 worked.
It had running water and food and vodka were plentiful.
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- "In Soviet times my salary was only 60 roubles but
everything cost kopecks," he said. "I worked on a machinery assembly
plant. Then came Gorbachev and Yeltsin and turned our lives upside down."
This Sunday, Viktor and the other 70-odd souls left in this dying village
100 miles from Moscow will vote in Russia's fourth presidential polls.
But while the village might be expected to vote for the past they yearn
for - and at least two presidential candidates are promising a return to
more equitable times - they will nearly all back President Putin.
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- "Putin is fantastic," Viktor said. "He's
strong. He's young. He gives us hope. He can't fix everything at once,
but he's got a new government now and things will slowly fall into place.
You won't find a person here who will say otherwise."
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- The former KGB man is in such favour that the opposition
will be lucky to get a single vote in the whole village. Explaining such
popularity has vexed Western observers ever since Mr Putin was elected.
In 2000 Mr Putin turned a five per cent poll rating into a 70 per cent
election victory in months. This weekend he is likely to win about 80 per
cent of the popular vote. A judo black belt, he is the most adored Russian
leader since Joseph Stalin in his heyday.
-
- He has none of the empathy exuded by Bill Clinton - he
once told a boy in hospital who had been hit by a car: "Well, next
time you'll be more careful, won't you?" Nor has he the straight-shooting
homespun style of George W Bush, preferring to express himself in convoluted
Soviet-era language that often puzzles his audience.
-
- Boris Yeltsin would delight supporters with ursine displays
of machismo, raising his arms and bellowing at officials, but Mr Putin's
delivery is controlled, even a little wooden.
-
- When he criticises his officials in public - a practice
critics say is intended to show he is above the political fray - his voice
is clipped and quiet. Masha Lipman, of the Moscow branch of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, said: "He is not a man of the people,
but he exudes strength. It is in line with the Russian tradition. He's
beyond criticism, like a tsar."
-
- Yuri Levada, a veteran political analyst, described him
as a "president of hope, not achievement".
-
- In Govorilovskoye, locals say that, democratic or not,
he is much better than the men who presided over the chaos and destruction
of the 1990s.
-
- Tatyana Matyayeva, 67, a pensioner walking to a well
to fetch water, said: "This village was thriving but now all the young
have left to look for jobs. That is the result of democracy."
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- Next door, Elizaveta Simyonova, 68, who lives with her
mother Anna, 90, sat on her freezing porch. "For us old people it's
too late," she said. "We gave our working lives to communism.
But we owe it to the youth to vote for Putin."
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/11/
wrus11.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/11/ixworld.html
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