WHEN Anya Kaluyeva, a Russian primary school teacher, was summoned to her boss’s office last week, she expected to discuss a new set of textbooks. The conversation quickly took a more sinister turn.

The head teacher asked the 48-year-old whom she intended to vote for in today’s parliamentary elections. When she hesitated, he ordered her to support United Russia, the party backed by President Vladimir Putin. He then issued a warning.

“He made it clear that if I didn’t vote for United Russia I’d lose my job,” said Kaluyeva, a mother of two who lives in a small town south of Moscow.

“I was so shocked I was left speechless. He put me under pressure and hinted that he had ways of checking who I’d voted for. I felt I was back in the Soviet Union.”

Expert View

The election result has never been in doubt, but the margin of victory is vital for Mr Putin to claim a popular mandate to retain power

Tony Halpin, Moscow Correspondent

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As millions of Russians go to the polls to vote for a new Duma, the 450-seat lower house of parliament, the result is a foregone conclusion. United Russia will win by a landslide. The vote, however, is much more than an ordinary parliamentary election.

Putin, who is due to step down in the spring when his second and final term permitted by the constitution ends, has turned the poll into an unofficial referendum on his eight years in power.

The Kremlin and the Russian president are thought to believe that anything less than 65% in favour of United Russia would be regarded as a failure.

There has been mounting evidence that voters have come under intense pressure to vote for United Russia. State employees ranging from teachers to doctors and factory workers have been ordered to cast their ballot for Putin and United Russia or face reprisals, including dismissal or demotion.

University students have accused professors of threatening them with expulsion or poor marks unless they vote for the Kremlin’s favoured party.

Some students have been told to vote at polling stations on campus, supervised by a lecturer, while others have been led to believe that hidden cameras have been installed in polling booths.

Workers at one factory in the Urals have claimed that their boss ordered them to take a photograph of their ballot paper with their mobile phone to prove they voted for United Russia.

At another state enterprise, in Siberia, the management received a letter from the local branch of United Russia warning that the Kremlin had been informed of its refusal to contribute funds to the party’s election campaign. “Your refusal has been taken as a direct rejection of Putin and his course,” it read.

A Moscow doctor, who was too scared to give his name, said the director of his clinic had told staff to vote for United Russia or their state funding would cease.

Critics say the pressure on voters to support the Kremlin’s choice and the relentless pro-Putin propaganda are reminiscent of Soviet times. Russia’s postelection political landscape is also likely to resemble the days of the cold war when the country voted for only the Communists.

According to the latest polls, United Russia will win more than two-thirds of the vote. The Communists are the only other party sure to pass the 7% threshold needed to win a parliamentary seat.

“We are witnessing the first absolutely nonfree election since the end of the Soviet Union,” said Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent liberal MP and Putin critic who has been barred from standing again.

Opposition parties have accused authorities of confiscating campaign materials and said managers of halls have refused to rent them out for meetings.

Sergei Mitrokhin, a leader of the liberal opposition party Yabloko, said today’s elections would be “the dirtiest in Russian history”. Yesterday Yabloko’s website was crippled by hackers shortly after it posted a video critical of Putin.

Foreign observers have decided to boycott the poll in protest at extended visa delays.

State television channels make no attempt to be balanced in their coverage. Cities across the country are plastered with giant billboards bearing the slogan: “Putin’s victory is Russia’s victory.” In the kind of sycophantic coverage once reserved for polit-buro chairmen, national state TV channels religiously open the evening news with glowing reports on Putin.

A speech that Putin gave last week, in which he accused the West of seeking to disrupt the elections and described opposition politicians as “foreign-backed jackals”, led the evening news, in a 16-minute report.

Last Thursday the noon news programme on the country’s largest TV network led with a paid-for Putin address to the nation in which he called on voters to cast ballots for United Russia. It was repeated on other channels throughout the day, raising criticism that he was misusing state resources for open campaigning.

Tension is running high as all public opposition to Putin’s rule is being crushed. A week ago baton-wielding riot police beat up demonstrators and arrested Garry Kasparov, the chess grand-master turned fierce Kremlin critic, who heads a small, motley opposition group but is not standing in today’s poll.

The poll will determine what Putin does after the presidential elections in March. Barred by the constitution from serving more than two consecutive terms, the Russian president is due to step down.

Until only a few months ago Putin was adamant he would retire, but he recently indicated that he plans to use his popularity to influence Russian politics. The higher the number of votes for United Russia, now that he is at the top of its list, the greater Putin’s “moral authority”, as he put it, to stay on as “national leader”.

“We are only four months from presidential elections, and only one man in the whole of Russia has any idea of what will happen,” said Andrei Illarionov, a former economic adviser to Putin. “Putin’s regime resembles the mafia, and he behaves like its godfather.”

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