In landslide upset, Vadim Gustov, the Communist-backed candidate, was elected governor of the Leningrad Oblast Sunday, toppling incumbent Alexander Belyakov.
Gustov emerged from a field of eight candidates with a crushing majority of 53.37 percent in preliminary returns reported Monday by the Oblast Elections Commission.
Belyakov, the Kremlin's officially endorsed candidate, was 20 percentage points behind with 31.66 percent.
The remaining 14.97 percent was split between none of the above - which came in third at 5.06 percent - and the other six candidates. Turnout was 34.43 percent of all eligible voters.
Gustov, who headed the Leningrad Oblast Soviet until it was disbanded with all of Russia's other local soviets in 1993, will be sworn in as governor of the largely agricultural region on Thursday, at a ceremony in St Petersburg.
Belyakov conceded Monday morning, saying, "My defeat should not be treated as a tragedy."
Monday Belyakov left for Moscow, to attend his last session of the Federation Council. After Thursday, Gustov will occupy his seat there.
Belyakov attributed his loss to the low turnout, and also to the policies of the federal government, whose endorsement he had ardently sought and cultivated throughout the campaign.
Noting that Gustov, a left-leaning political independent, had been backed by Gennady Zyuganov's Communist Party, Belyakov said the elections indicated the Kremlin needed to make "corrections" in its policies.
In Moscow, Zyuganov put much the same spin on the outcome.
"The left opposition is completely satisfied with the results of the Leningrad Oblast election," he told reporters Monday. "Gustov used legitimate tactics that did not divide the region into Reds and Whites."
Gustov said Monday morning that he would be guided in office not by ideology but by principles of sound management.
"My program is based not on political divisions but on economic questions," he said. "It is not important if the democrats or the Communists hold power, but that people work."
He said his first priorities would be to draft the oblast's 1997 budget, to prepare the region for winter, and to form an oblast government.
Former mayor Anatoly Sobchak, who worked with both candidates during his five-year tenure, flatly told Interfax Monday that "Gustov is not a Communist."
"I have known him for a long time and consider him to be a good manager," Sobchak said. He also took a swipe at old foe Belyakov in remarks reported by Reuters, saying Belyakov had made the oblast "the worst in Russia" during his reign.
Gustov's victory capped an energetic grass roots campaign across the Ireland-sized oblast where he visited factories, collective farms and military installations at a pace of three towns a day.
Belyakov, meanwhile, rarely entered the oblast - and indeed, could not even vote Sunday because his propiska, or residency permit, is for St Petersburg proper.
The election law - written under Belyakov - allows a St Petersburg resident to run for governor if he or she is already working for the oblast administration, but does not allow him or her to vote in the region's elections.
Telephone polls taken two weeks before the vote showed Belyakov with a commanding 38-percentage point lead over Gustov. Most political observers in Moscow and St Petersburg were unanimous that Belyakov would win easily.
But telephone polls are notorious in Russia for under-reporting the vote in rural regions; and a two-day tour of the oblast's villages in the week before the vote found few telephones, but plenty of Gustov campaign literature - often bearing the hammer and sickle of the Communist Party that has backed him.
In several villages, residents had heard of Gustov but not of Belyakov - even though Belyakov has been the governor since he was appointed five years ago.
Gustov, at least, was confident throughout of his victory.
Even before the numbers began to trickle in late Sunday night, Gustov was sporting a wide smile as he confidently strolled the halls of the Leningrad Oblast Government Building, where the elections commission is located.
Belyakov, meanwhile, spent most of the night out of sight in his third floor office.
Throughout the evening, information-hungry reporters huddled outside the door of the elections commission chairman, Yevgeny Demidchik, who would emerge every five minutes to say: "Five more minutes."
When Demidchik finally emerged at around 1 a.m. with region-by-region results, the dimensions of the Gustov victory became clear. Gustov won 21 of the 23 regions announced.
As each new region was reported, Gustov's smile became broader. He drank champagne, smoked and joked with his supporters. At times he managed to even have a laugh at the expense of Demidchik.
"Who did you vote for, Yevgeny Viktorovich?" Gustov asked as the chairman, widely believed to be a Belyakov supporter, read results from his home region.
The Gustov camp would only become serious in those rare moments when results from a region they were unsure of were about to be announced. Such was the case in Gatchina, the tsarist suburb 40 kilometers outside of St Petersburg.
Gustov won by a slim margin. Looking relieved, he volunteered that Gatchina had been an important region he feared he might not take.
"Winning there tells me things are going well," he said.
Although as the results became inescapably conclusive, Gustov said, "I was certain of victory all along, because I have the only program to bring the oblast out of economic crisis."
Meanwhile, in Rostov Oblast, unofficial returns Monday showed reformist Governor Vladimir Chub with 62 percent of the vote.