Seattle Consulate Busy As Russians Cast Votes

About 600 Russian citizens in the Pacific Northwest streamed into the downtown Russian Consulate to vote in their country’s election.

One of them - Nadejda Tchebakova, a senior research scientist for the Russian Academy of Sciences working at the University of Idaho - drove six hours from Moscow, Idaho, to have her say about what will happen in Moscow, Russia.

“They want to make their lives better. It’s a plain reason,” Consul Gennady Bessonov said of Sunday’s turnout. “We have several different candidates running, and it is so very important for the people to choose.”

Tchebakova cast her ballot for President Boris Yeltsin. She said she fears if Yeltsin falls, “I’ll be cut off from America.”

Tchebakova, from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, has been on a Fulbright Scholarship for the past year at Idaho, where she studies how climate changes affect vegetation.

“The Communists know only one way: Suppress the people,” said Tchebakova, who drove to Seattle with her American research colleague, Robert Monserud, and his wife.

“Yeltsin’s very Russian,” she said. “He’s strong. He’s open. He’s real stubborn. But I trust him. And I just had to vote today no matter what.”

Russian diplomats estimate there are 1,500 Russian citizens living in Western Washington, including people with dual citizenship or studying on student visas.

Back home, voters were deeply divided about who should shape their future. With 99 percent of the vote counted, Yeltsin was slightly ahead of his Communist challenger, Gennady Zyuganov. A runoff election will be held in the next few weeks.

Yeltsin was the favorite with about a dozen voters interviewed here.

“We don’t want to go back to the past,” said Robert Ayrapetov. “It’s not for me. I escaped my country because of the Communists.”

Democracy has allowed Natasha Ilina and others to study abroad, and she hopes not to see the Communists return to power.

“I really don’t want to go back right now,” said Ilina, 25, who has been in the United States on a student visa for two years.

Ilina, from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii in the Far East, said her father’s fishing business prospered under democratic reforms.