It has been called the most dishonest election since the break-up of the Soviet Union. A voter in Russia was reported saying: "During the Soviet times I was never a member of the Communist Party, and in the 1990s I voted for liberals like Yabloko. I haven't changed my ideas or values but it seems to me the communists are the only real force who can oppose (Vladimir Putin's) United Russia". The remark is a sign of the times in Russia.
The leader of the Communist Party, which won 11 per cent of the vote, called them "the dirtiest, most irresponsible elections" and indicated his party would contest the result; a forlorn hope, one imagines.
There is much to indicate that last weekend's election was rigged and a statement issued by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe flatly declared: "The election was not fair and failed to meet the standards for democratic elections". Riding on the crest of victory, Mr Putin will not be unduly dismayed by this and, anyway, the French President has sent in his congratulations.
Why did Mr Putin contest these elections, in which "his" party gained more than 60 per cent of the vote? To become Prime Minister. Why does he wish to be Prime Minister? Because he cannot contest a third Presidential election (not until the Constitution is changed) but he can endorse a candidate who will be a nominal head of state. Why else did he select an unknown to be his Prime Minister last October if not to plant him in the Presidential seat?
In the same way that United Russia is not so much his party as his rubber stamp, so will his protégé be when elections for the appointment are held early next March. Mr Putin now controls Parliament. Next spring he will control the state.
Russia has been here before many times in its history, jam-packed as it is with autocracy, absolutism and never quite benign, very often malign dictatorships. One reported remark in a speech Mr Putin gave before the election bears repeating. It gives an idea as to how far the Russian President has travelled since 1999, when, paradoxically, a meandering Boris Yeltsin steered him in the direction of power.
"Those who oppose us need a weak, sick state, a disorientated, divided society, so that behind its back they can get up to their dirty deeds and profit at your and my expense. Unfortunately, there are jackals inside the country who sponge off foreign embassies." This is vintage, Cold War xenophobia.
Why are people in a position of almost absolute power so fearsome of the electorate? The drubbing Hugo Chavez received in Venezuela provides the answer. This is not to place the xenophobic Venezuelan in the same league as Mr Putin but both subscribe to the personal belief that the electorate is not to be trusted. As in the case of Mr Chavez, so in Mr Putin's, one may assume that, for all the power the latter wields, for all the success of the oil-boom driven Russian economy, for all the stability in the country, for all the popularity he enjoys as the strongman who can stand up to the West, he is still afraid of the real freedom in a real democracy.
One can expect an even more hostile Russia from now on. The West's initial love-in with the initially shy and reserved persona Mr Putin presented to the world is a distant memory.