A pensioner and lifelong Communist who has found economic reforms hard to accept he was planning to vote

A pensioner and lifelong Communist who has found economic reforms hard to accept, he was planning to vote for the nationalist retired general, Alexander Lebed. "It's because I don't like Zyuganov as a personality," he said.Old Mr Matveyev intended to combine voting with going to his daughter's flat in town to take a bath for the first time in two weeks. Druzhba (Friendship), one of a chain of Soviet-era allotment settlements which also includes Raduga (Rainbow), is 100km (62 miles) from the capital but conditions are primitive The commuter belt south of Moscow is not exactly Surrey. Here, for example, there is no running water and Mr Matveyev normally washes from an upturned bucket.Across the lane from the Matveyevs, Viktor Frolov, an engineer at a railway centre, was watering his cucumbers, after which he and his wife were going to drive home to Moscow to vote for Mr Zyuganov. "The Yeltsin years have been hard for all involved in science and teaching," he said.At 10am there was a lively stream of traffic to and from Moscow.

People who had voted early were driving out to their dachas to enjoy the rest of the day. People who had been at their dachas were cutting the weekend short and returning to town to vote. Police were gearing up for huge traffic- jams.By the side of the road, the real country folk were coming from village polling-stations dressed in their Sunday best, as if for church. In the market town of Bronitsa, halfway to Moscow, the local House of Culture, turned into a polling-station for the day, was reporting brisk business.To the side of the yellow-curtained booths, on a trestle table decorated with vases of peonies, a local catering firm was running a buffet. Manager Lyudmila Logvinova said her voting intentions were private but hinted she would opt for a pro-reform candidate.

"Food may be expensive," she said, "but at least now there are no more empty shelves and a good choice of things to eat.". Yevgeny Yegorov had made his mind up about one thing. Wherever else in Russia the authorities might try to fiddle the vote, they would not get away with it on his patch. He and his fellow observers from the Communist Party were going to be as vigilant as hawks. "I think there probably will be some falsification," he said, as he gazed morosely across the town square, which was teeming with people who had come to vote but who were lingering to watch the election-day festivities - clowns, a theatre troupe, and a military band playing favourites from old Soviet films. The patch in question was Moskovsky, a community 10 miles south of Moscow which owes its living largely to roses, carnations and cucumbers. For Mr Yegorov and his six party colleagues, this was barren soil, enemy territory where the liberal economist Grigory Yavlinsky came first in December's elections. That was one reason they were here: to weed out any sign of fraud by the pro-reformers."They have been very correct, very co-operative so far," he admitted yesterday at lunchtime, after inspecting the wax seals on the ballot boxes "But the crucial time is between 8pm and 10pm.

The risk is that the organisers have acquaintances whom they know won't be voting and decide to vote on their behalf. We will be watching constantly."The plan was straightforward He would stay at his post until the count was complete. By law, he would then get a copy of the figures to pass on to party district and regional headquarters. From there it would go up the line to the Communists' central committee, where they were doing a nationwide count. "And just in case they suddenly run out of protocols here, I have brought my own," he said, flourishing a fistful of documents.

Before the election, the Communists vowed to place observers in all the 95,000 stations across Russia to make it as hard as possible for any vote- rigging to occur. Mr Yeltsin's campaign did the same, mindful that many of the local election officials who run the voting stations are Communists.Last night it was impossible to tell whether either side had fulfilled its plans, although there were observers in the Moscow region. Meanwhile, the whole process is being watched by 1,200 international observers, roughly one for each of the 85 voting centres.For all the suspicions of Mr Yegorov, a 60-year-old retired farm official, the scene was as serene as the nearby greenhouses. Children rode bicycles in the square while their parents wandered in to vote or browse the stalls packed with fruit, chocolates, tins of fish, beer, vodka, soap and other luxuries. Two actresses dressed as witches, their peaked hats jutting into the rainy skies, were playing a game called "Make Your Choice". Passers-by had to toss a hat on to a stick.Inside the busy polling booths there was serious activity.