"ONCE again we have been forced to learn the lesson that capturing the presidential palace does not mean you have captured the country."
This was the comment of a reporter from Russian television, in Grozny to cover the Chechen presidential and parliamentary elections which went ahead yesterday despite fears they might be disrupted by terrorism.
Moscow, which spent nearly two years trying to beat the proud Muslim Chechens into submission, could only look on just as, back in 1989, it was forced to admit defeat in Afghanistan and let the equally resilient people there have their own way.
The Chechen vote, in which electors had a choice of 13 presidential candidates, every one of them committed to securing full independence for the Caucasian region, was a bitter pill for Russians to swallow.
Some Muscovites took a relaxed view. "There's a little Russian poem," said Pyotr Kolesnikov, a factory worker with a wife and two small children: `A star fell down from heaven, into my darling's trousers, let it burn there, as long as there is no war.' I think you'll find that is the attitude of most Russians."
But other Muscovites, while relieved that the costly fighting was over, were more resentful.
"On street corners now," said Marina Podolskaya, a housewife, "you see not only invalids from the Afghan war but young men just back from Chechnya with their limbs blown off, begging for bread. So much suffering. And all for what?"
"We're just back at square one for the Chechens," said Oleg Antonov, a mechanic. "After two years of war, they are still free to send their criminals to Russia." The Kremlin used the argument that the late Chechen leader, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was running a criminal state in order to justify its military intervention in the separatist region.
Russian officials were much more diplomatic in their comments about the election.
"Let's see whom the Chechens elect as their leader," the Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, said at the weekend.
"It is the will of the Chechen people and not to heed the will of the people is impermissible. I am sure that the leadership of Russia will find ways of co operating - if there is a desire from the other side."
But there was no disguising the fact that the Russian Goliath had been humiliatingly defeated.
Experts on the Islamic world warned President Boris Yeltsin that he would unleash "an internal Afghanistan" if he sent troops to Chechnya.
But back in December 1994, he preferred to heed the advice of his then defence minister, Mr Pavel Grachev, who boasted that the rebellious Chechens could be sorted out in a matter of hours.
Instead, it took the mighty Russian army, backed up with tanks and air power, two months of bloody and destructive fighting to capture the capital, Grozny, from the lightly armed rebels, who retreated to the mountains to continue a guerrilla war against what they regarded as an occupying imperialist force.
They carried out some headline grabbing terrorist raids on Russia proper, including two attacks on hospitals in which hundreds of civilians were held hostage.
Mr Yeltsin began to realise that using force against Chechnya had been the biggest mistake of his presidency.
Then last August, a band of Chechen rebels infiltrated back into their capital and ran rings round the far larger but demoralised Russian conscript army, which lost control of the city.
Mr Yeltsin had no choice but to allow Gen Alexander Lebed, a political rival who had done well in the Russian presidential election by campaigning against the war, to go to Chechnya and negotiate a peace settlement.
Russia agreed to withdraw its troops and gave consent to the election to find a new Chechen leader to replace Doku Zavgayev, the hated puppet installed by Moscow.
Both sides agreed to shelve for five years the highly sensitive issue - of whether Chechnya should be allowed full independence.
In the run up to the election, six foreigners working for the RedCross were murdered and other civilians, including two Russian Orthodox priests, were kidnapped in acts of clear political provocation. It seemed unlikely the Chechens would do anything to disrupt their own poll, but Moscow hotly denied suggestions its secret services were behind the attacks.
Russian officials have made no secret of the fact that of the 13 Chechen presidential candidates, they find the guerrilla leader of one of the hospital raids, Shamil Basayev, most unpalatable, and the former leader of the resistance. Aslan Maskhadov regarded as a moderate, most acceptable as a future negotiating partner.
Whoever wins - and Maskhadov is tipped as the front runner - Moscow will have to do business with him. The Russian Foreign Ministry warned the international community on Sunday that it would sever diplomatic relations with any country which recognised Chechnya.
But sooner or later, the nettle of Chechen independence will have to be grasped.
For their part, the Chechens must also learn a lesson. After Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan, the Afghans tore themselves apart in a bitter civil war. Russia was the common enemy which held the different Chechen groups together. Now that it is drawing back, they must find their own national unity.