After a report by special Russian correspondent Simon Marks, Ray Suarez leads a discussion on the implications of yesterday's election results.

RAY SUAREZ: For more on Russia's parliamentary elections we turn to Wayne Merry, director of the Program on European Societies in Transition at the Atlantic Council; and Thomas Graham, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Wayne Merry, should people else where in the world be reassured, encouraged even by the way the campaign was conducted and by the results?

WAYNE MERRY: I think moderately encouraged by the outcome. I think the prospects are that at least a year from now after we have our election, that whoever is the new American president will be dealing with the Russian government which there is at least a bit of cohesion between the legislative branch and the executive -- and not the kind of continue wall battling that we've seen between the Duma and Yeltsin in recent years. The conduct of the election is not quite so good. I think that one of the things that has happened is that elections have become so much the vehicle in which political battles are fought in Russia today - which is good -- that it has attracted an enormous amount of money of kinds that would be shocking even in an American political context. And the people with the new money, the gangster money, or the oligarch money, have put an enormous amount of that cash into the political process through the media. So I think we'll find that increasingly the corruption of Russian politics will be associated with the corruption that we've already seen in the economy.

RAY SUAREZ: But, Thomas Graham, given the turnout, given the way that the different factions and parties actually really try to slug it out in an open market with each other should we be cheering for a country that after only ten years is having regular elections and making these choices?

THOMAS GRAHAM: Well, I don't know if cheering is the right word for it. I think we should be encouraged that Russia has gone through its third series of Duma elections but as Wayne pointed out there is problems with the process. It's not only gangster money, oligarch money, it's also the Kremlin that used its influence over the two leading television stations to conduct a relentless smear campaign against their opponents and destroy them. Yes, there were also other parties in the campaign. They did represent a broad range of views, but I doubt that most of the Russian public heard the views of those parties. In fact, what is striking about this election campaign is how few of the really serious problems that are facing Russia were discussed during the campaign, nothing about the deep socio-economic crisis, nothing really about Chechnya and where the county is headed in that campaign, so from the standpoint of issues I think the election campaign was disappointing.

RAY SUAREZ: Can we see the shape of a future Russian politics starting to gel now? Some of the parties that we would term on the extreme left and right of the Russian spectrum didn't do very well yesterday.

THOMAS GRAHAM: I think that is true. I think two of the figures who are best known in the West have been demonstrated to be very much at the margins of Russian politics; Zhirinovsky, the extreme nationalist, only got about 6 percent of the vote. Yavlinsky, who is very favorably looked upon by some people in this country, only got about 6 percent of the vote as well. I think they are very much on the margins. Most of the dispute and most of the campaigning was about this sort of new center of Russian politics. But I entirely agree with Tom that most of the issues that face the country were absolutely not on the table. This was a battle between coalitions of politicians over power -- something that does happen in other countries. But this was not really an ideological battle. It was not a battle about specific programs. It was not a pro-or anti-western battle. This is really a battle between competing groups of leading political figures and there, the Kremlin put its massive support with a lot of money from some of its supporters behind one group, the people who did very well and into a really very vicious smear campaign against its opponents.

WAYNE MERRY: If I could, this campaign has not been good for party development in Russia. The Unity coalition really was something that was cobbled together at the last minute three months ago and it's cobbled together from regional leaders, regional executive branches that the Kremlin thought could deliver the votes as well as undermine the appeal of another bloc of regional governors that was led by Former Prime Minister Primakov and Moscow Mayor Lushkov. These are ad hoc coalitions. The fatherland or Russia coalition of Primakov and Lushkov is almost certain to fall apart now that the election campaign is over. And it's difficult to see what holds the Unity bloc together over the long run, other than a desire to participate and share in the spoils of power in Russia. So from the standpoint of party development I think again this was a bad result for Russia.

RAY SUAREZ: But, isn't that the seeds of parties? You know, a lot of countries around the world, if we look at the origins of the Social Democrats in one country, or the Christian Democrats in another, the Conservatives in another, it may be that they began with a regional party, it may be that they began around a specific issue, and then grew into a party out of that just from fighting elections.

THOMAS GRAHAM: Right.

RAY SUAREZ: You sort of pick up an ideology.

THOMAS GRAHAM: That's exact -- but there is not a unifying idea behind Unity other than power itself. The Unity party is a centrist coalition in the sense if you took the average of all its members and its supporters, it comes out somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum but its leadership includes people who by our standards nationalists, some Communists, some ultra nationalists, and also some liberal elements. So it's not a party that's held together by ideology. It's not a party that's held together by practical deeds. It very much is a party that wants to enjoy in dividing up power and the spoils of power.

RAY SUAREZ: But, Wayne Merry, this was a chance for the current Russian prime minister so to show that he has got electoral possibilities. In the Simon Marks piece we heard how Mr. Putin came out very strong for Unity. Can we see this as sort of a trial run for him?

WAYNE MERRY: We can but we should also see who is the real power behind Unity, the real puppet master here, and that is Boris Yeltsin. What you have to understand is that without Yeltsin, Putin would not even be on the political stage. Six months ago I doubt if one Russian in six could have correctly identified Putin and fewer Americans, of course. He is the front runner to be the next president of Russia only because Yeltsin brought him to the center of the political stage and put the massive support of the Kremlin, its media and its financial backers behind him.

RAY SUAREZ: But hasn't the prosecution of the war in Chechnya also changed Putin's standing?

WAYNE MERRY: It certainly has given him an image as a very strong and decisive leader. That has been to his advantage, no question, but this is really an issue of the succession to Boris Yeltsin and Yeltsin's efforts to manipulate and control that process of succession. Now, there have been lots of other people around who thought at one point in time that they were going to be Yeltsin's successor. At the moment it looks like Putin is probably going to get the job, but not so much because of his personal qualities or his political qualities, but because he happens to be in the right place at the right time when the secession is likely to come about.

RAY SUAREZ: Do we make a mistake, Thomas Graham, looking at these elections through American lenses? I remember after earlier elections in the 90's the hand wringing over the strong finish of the Communists or the strong finish of Zhirinovsky, and now the Communists are being discussed as having peaked. Zhirinovsky is an also-ran. Do we sometimes not look at these elections in a very Russian grounded context?

THOMAS GRAHAM: Well, of course, this is always a problem of mirror imaging in trying to understand what these election results would mean if they were in the United States and not in Russia. And the point is that this election although as I said, it's encouraging that had they had held these elections on schedule, it really does very little to change the basic structure of Russian politics and the struggle for power. The key here is control over institutions at the center, financial flows, media outlets and so forth and the struggle for power is conducted among business oligarchs, regional barons, and the people are brought into the process at the very end. And it's usually only after the power struggle has been decided at the level that the people are given a choice.

RAY SUAREZ: Will the new Duma, Wayne Merry, be more likely in American interests to ratify START II, which I believe comes before them in the coming months? Will they have a different view of the war in Chechnya?

WAYNE MERRY: I think they will be very supportive of the current government policy on Chechnya. That is very widely backed by most of the people who were elected to the Duma yesterday. I think there is a chance, and I say just a chance, that the START II Treaty may have a new lease on life for ratification on the Russian side. I think there is a good prospect that the necessary 226 votes out of the 450 seats will be available to ratify the treaty. But I'm certain it would only be ratified with a major proviso that the United States continue to adhere to the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. So I think even if we do get that treaty ratified and we move towards the START III, which I think both governments would like to do, it's going to present the United States with a fairly fundamental choice as to whether we want to go ahead with ballistic missile defense.

RAY SUAREZ: And continued economic reform, Thomas Graham?

THOMAS GRAHAM: Well, I don't know if that is quite the case at this point. The one advantage of this election is that it removes the charge that it's the Communist-dominated Duma that's preventing both START II ratification and economic reform going forward. I think before it was always much more complicated than that. There were certainly forces outside the Duma noncommunist, oligarch, regional barons, who were opposed to the type of economic reform that the United States and the West would like to see go forward in Russia. I think what you are going to see with this new Duma is these same battles now being fought out not simply by Communists but by so-called centrists in the Duma. And we're going to - if we look closely -- get a much better feel for the real distribution of a power and interest in Russia. Finally, everyone knows that the real problem on reform is not so much to be for tax reform or for anti-corruption campaigns. It is the details; what does that tax mean for my specific interest? And these things are going to be tough battles to fight for Putin and everyone else in the Duma over the next several months.

RAY SUAREZ: Thomas Graham, Wayne Merry, good to talk to you both.