Who gives a better return on your money: the mafia boss who provides peace in exchange for 15-30 percent of your revenues, or a government that offers a collapsing infrastructure and virtually no services in return for 30 percent of your income?The answer to that morally vexing question is surely at the root of two worrying opinion polls published recently in Izvestia.In one poll, respondents in Moscow and St. Petersburg were asked who wields real power in Russia. The president came out marginally ahead of the government, which is as one might expect. But in a disturbingly solid third position came the mafia.A second "parallel" poll was still more worrying. It found that 21 percent of Muscovites believed real power to rest in the hands of the mafia, while only 5 percent thought the president was in charge. Fully 46 percent said they did not know who was in charge.What is going on here? In the space of just two years organized crime has grown so strong in Russia that the public believes criminals run the country. In part this conviction must result from a belief that the government in its broadest sense -- including all the bureaucracies and ministries that touch virtually every aspect of the life of a Russian citizen -- are shot through with corruption.But more acute than that is the evidence visible to anybody living in Russia that the authorities are scrambling to implement their decisions, while the mafia that runs everybody's local restaurant wields tangible power and influence.In essence the mafia has filled a power vacuum that was left behind when the old system crumbled with no democratic institutions waiting in the wings to replace it.This was inevitable in the first instance, but it need not be Russia's fate. It is possible to build a strong state based on democratic institutions and the rule of law -- it is being done elsewhere in Eastern Europe. It is time for President Boris Yeltsin to make a real start.The first step should be to convene the Constitutional Court, without which there can be no stable division of powers. From there on down the courts, parliament and other institutions of democratic power must be built up if only because one man -- no matter how well intentioned -- can never rule a country of this size and complexity without using force. Russia's history is filled with evidence for this truth and the current rule by mafia is in many ways just the latest, albeit anarchic, incarnation of this force. Other examples were the many repressions of the Soviet and tsarist regimes. It is Yeltsin's challenge to break this circle of violence, as well as the mafia.