Polar bears and pastries: voting Siberian style

BARNAUL, Russia (Reuters) - For some Siberian voters, election day began with a dip in an ice-cold river.

"Cold water invigorates. We are making our choice with a healthy body and healthy mind," Alexander Zelyenetsky, leader of the "Polar Bears" swimming club in the Siberian region of Altai, said after emerging through a hole in the ice of a local river.

His choice, like that of many others in Russia, is Vladimir Putin. The 55-year-old president is by far Russia's most popular politician after presiding over eight years of an economic boom.

Pollsters say Putin's United Russia party -- which also boasts a polar bear as its logo -- will win an overwhelming victory in Sunday's parliamentary election.

Lyudmila Pistsova, a 28-year-old accountant in the Altai regional capital Barnaul, also cast her vote for the party that has put Putin top of its list of candidates.

"It seems like the only party that can really help our region," she said.

The ballot is seen as a referendum on Putin, who aims to retain influence after stepping down as president in early 2008 and says a strong mandate from voters will give him that right.

Voters in Altai, a region nested between the Kazakh steppe and the mountains after which it is named, arrived early. They ate cheap pastries sold at polling stations and enjoyed a 10 percent discount offered by tailors and cobblers nearby.

VOTING AT DAWN

Student Eldar Manakov, 19, arrived before dawn at a polling station in Barnaul to clear away the night's snowfall.

Manakov said he worked as a street-sweeper to earn 3,000 roubles ($123.2) a month because his 600 rouble student grant wasn't enough to live on. But when he finished his shift clearing snow, he had no doubt for whom he would vote.

"I will vote for United Russia. I like this party best. I believe in Putin and hope his party will help the youth."

Pensioners like Galina Guk, 69, who stopped at the polling station on her way to work, were among the first to arrive. She too voted for United Russia.

"All my life I've voted for the Communists, or for Zhirinovsky," she said, referring to the fiercely nationalistic leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.

"But now I've decided on Putin because I'm afraid of any change. Everything suits me today. But I would like there to be more different parties in the state Duma, as deputies work better when there's competition."

The election has been overshadowed by opposition accusations that pro-Kremlin forces enjoy an unfair advantage.

Vladimir Reprintsev, 74, was one of the few voters in Barnaul, 4,000 km (2,500 miles) east of Moscow, to say he was supporting an opposition party.

A former pilot, he voted for the Agrarian Party. Altai is one of Siberia's most fertile regions but has not escaped the depression and poverty that has blighted rural communities across Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

"Altai is an agricultural region. We need to pick our peasants up from their knees," Reprintsev said. "As long as there's bread, life will be good."

(Writing by Robin Paxton; Editing by Michael Winfrey)