Russia: After The Fall

In Russia, the big question in Sunday's election is not who will become the next president. The question, nine years after the fall of communism, is whether people still have faith that democracy can work in Russia.

For most Russians, the good life remains one of capitalism's unkept promises. People are yearning for order, and grappling with signs of decay and corruption everywhere they look. CBS News' Dan Rather reports.

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In St. Petersburg and across Russia, voters say they are looking for someone to crack down on crime and lift the nation's stagnant economy. That's a program that gives hope to Russian entrepreneurs, who are perhaps the brightest spots in the economy. They are small businesses willing to take on big challenges.

"Things will change because everything changes in life," says Lena Gournova. She runs Generator, a 6-month-old advertising agency in St. Petersburg that promotes products from Tampax to tea bags. But these are tough sells.

"I think, first problem is that they're expensive," she explains. "On the average, the economical level of average people is rather low. So it means that most of the foreign products, if you take it as they are, they don't work price-wise."

It's not easy to raise consumer interest in a country where there's so little income, but Gournova would not go back to the Russia of her parents' time.

"I think older people in this country, they were spoiled by socialism, to my point of view," says Gournova, "because everything was guaranteed, and they didn't have to fight for things."

Her parents' Russia is remembered by New Yorker editor David Remnick, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Russia and the fall of communism.

"1991 was euphoria for a lot of people. It was an open promise," Remnick recalls. "1991 (when Gorbachev resigned, Yeltsin came to the fore, and the Soviet Union collapsed) is a very, very long time ago, far longer ago in Russia than it is in the United States. Every year is like 10. That's what happens in a revolution. And certainly, most of the promise and all of the euphoria of that time has long since been erased."