A Russian child helps her grandmother fill voting papers at a polling station in St. Petersburg

December 19, 1999
Web posted at: 3:37 p.m. EST (2037 GMT)

In this story: Preview of 2000 presidential race Communist chief: 'We will be first' Chechen war helps Putin-backed party RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

MOSCOW (CNN) -- The Communist Party opened up an early lead as expected Sunday in a Russian parliamentary election seen as a dress rehearsal for next year's presidential poll. But a pro-Kremlin party was running second and an allied right-of- center group performed unexpectedly well.

An exit poll quoted by NTV television after voting ended across the vast country at 1800 GMT gave 28 percent to the Communists, staunch critics of President Boris Yeltsin. The Unity Party, set up three months ago to back Kremlin policy and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, stood at 24 percent.

VIDEO CNN's Mike Hanna reports in excess of 60 percent of Russians have turned out to vote in some areas. Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K     MESSAGE BOARD Russia's future     ALSO Russians call for Chechen rebels to give up

Third place with 11 percent was shared by Fatherland-All Russia, a bloc opposed to the Kremlin, and the Union of Right-Wing Forces (SPS), a pro-Western party of technocrats which turned in a surprisingly strong showing. SPS broadly backs Putin.

The battle between the centrist parties is expected to test the strength of three possible future presidents: Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and ex-Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who leads the Fatherland-All Russia coalition; and Putin, who backs the Unity Party.

All three are considered potential successors to Yeltsin in the 2000 elections.

Central Election Commission head Alexander Veshnyakov said the voter turnout stood at 55 percent, slightly lower than election officials had projected, Interfax news agency reported.

With all three men considered potential successors to ailing President Boris Yeltsin, the showings of those two parties are seen as a test of their strength going into the 2000 presidential elections.

Central Election Commission head Alexander Veshnyakov said the latest figures put turnout at nearly 40 percent, Interfax news agency reported. More than 25 percent of the 107 million potential voters had to cast ballots for the poll to be valid. Election officials expect the eventual tally could exceed 60 percent.

A campaign sign shows Luzhkov, left, and Primakov, center, leaders of the Fatherland-All Russia coalition

Voting is due to end at 1800 GMT in the Baltic enclave of Kalingrad. Early results were due around the same time.

The Communists, staunch critics of Yeltsin's rule, are expected to win the largest bloc of votes in the 450-seat legislative body.

"We are not in any doubt that we will be first," Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said as he voted in the snow-dusted capital.

Yeltsin, 68, showed no signs of his recent bout of illness as he cast his ballot at a school in western Moscow, saying he hoped the new Duma would be an effective lawmaking body.

"Russia needs the kind of Duma which will get down to business, make laws rather than politicize," he said, referring to the previous Communist-led Duma which tried to impeach him earlier this year.

Parties rarely talked about platforms or how they would make life better in a country where the economy has been in decline for a decade, millions of workers go months without being paid and the health system, schools and other services are falling apart.

But the campaigns featured everything disillusioned Russian voters have come to expect from their legislators: grandiose rhetoric, vicious attacks and few ideas.

Each party offered the same promise of tough leadership. The message appealed to some Russians, but there is widespread disillusionment with politicians and politics.

"There was a lot of dirt and no one had any real program," said Alexander Smolnikov, a 52-year-old former Marxist history teacher after voting in Moscow for the Communists.

Putin's popularity has grown greatly since Russian troops moved into Chechnya to crush the breakaway republic's Islamic rebels after their summer incursions into the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan, which may boost the Unity Party.

None of Russia's parties oppose the three-month-old war, and candidates from several parties have come to the front to campaign for the votes of soldiers serving in Chechnya.

As Russian warplanes pounded the Chechen capital and rebel strongholds in southern Chechnya on Sunday, Russian soldiers voted in Mozdok, just north of the breakaway republic.

Thanks to the popularity of the Chechen war, Putin is considered the front-runner in the race to succeed Yeltsin.

There was no voting in Chechnya, but the more than 250,000 Chechen refugees in neighboring regions were allowed to vote for the national party of their choice.

But since there were no individual district races in Chechnya, as in the rest of the country, the refugees could not cast a second vote for an individual candidate, as other Russians did. Regardless of the conditions, many Chechens had no interest in voting in Russian elections.

Only minor election incidents were reported. The Communist Party accused opponents of trying to compromise it by leaving 24 bottles of vodka outside its campaign headquarters, thus implying the party was trying to gain votes with bribes.

Correspondents Mike Hanna, Matthew Chance, Steve Harrigan and Reuters contributed to this report.

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