ABSTRACT
The implausible vignettes of Russia’s historic elections Sunday, one of the most curious occurred when a very proper elementary school headmistress, Agafonova Antonina Vasiljevna, spoke at some length with one of the “normal” American election observers. They were chatting away at the School No. 2 in this town sixty miles west of Moscow. Miss Agafonova, a portly, charming teacher with the very tight brown curls who was in charge of the voting place, was explaining to the friendly man from Washington how enthusiastic the voters were. In fact, they are wildly inconclusive about where Russia is going. And the odd meeting between the headmistress and the Western world’s former intelligence director in truth mirrored the confusion of a traumatized people searching for the new principles for a state, while barely knowing how imperfect all the vehicles really were.
