There was at least one welcome surprise in Sunday's elections, namely that fully 65 percent of the population turned out to vote, more than in the last State Duma elections in 1993 and dramatically more than some analysts had believed would be the case.


That has removed one of the worst worries of the vote. For what if Russians were offered democracy, but had so little faith in the power of their vote that they never bothered to seize the chance? How could one then argue against a General Lebed, who would be Pinochet; a Boris Yeltsin who would postpone the presidential elections; or a Communist leader who would reinstate the Party in its former monopoly?


The fact of the Communist success itself is certainly disturbing. It is still entirely unclear what kind of communists these are, and how sincere rather than tactical their moderate incarnation in the form of Gennady Zyuganov may be. But for now, there is no need for panic. They have won only part of the Duma, and it is in the Kremlin that power lies.


There is also great relief to be had in the retreat of the nationalist vote. Vladimir Zhirinovsky's share of the electorate has shrunk from 23 percent to less than half that since 1993, while the much touted threat from the Congress of Russian Communities simply failed to materialize. If the Communists have captured those nationalist protest votes, it is probably a good trade.


Another important characteristic of the vote is that, following an election campaign almost devoid of manifestos, issues or searching debate, this was less a victory for the Communists than it was a defeat for the president.


The protest vote was huge, and it was not a protest first of all against Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. It was a cry against the status quo and the man who brought it about, Boris Yeltsin.


This seems especially clear in light of the president's last-minute appeal to the voters not to turn to the past. Yeltsin built his present career on his role as the dragonslayer, the man who brought the Communist Party low. He did the right thing by appearing on national television to remind the electorate of where he stands before the vote. But it seems that much of the country ignored him.


In the end, though, Yeltsin cannot be too unhappy about Sunday's outcome. His government did respectably, while the nationalist vote abated. And the Communists, his natural sparring partners, have done well enough to create the kind of threat against which the president may be able to rally the tattered remnants of his former support in time for the real event -- the presidential elections in June.