RUSSIA: Furkasovsky Alley

Between Dzerzhinsky Street and Little Lubyanka Street in the heart of Moscow, on Furkasovsky Alley, stands a new yellow brick, nine-story building, resplendent with black marble pilasters. Sentries are posted at the doors. Up and down, the Alley plainclothesmen saunter with studied unconcern. This is the home of the all-powerful EKU (Ekonomicheskoe Upravlenie), economic division of NKVD.

What goes on inside? Probably no one outside of the Politburo could tell the whole story, but the Russian writer Konstantin Zhikharev, ex-Red army major, has sketched in the outline in the new Russian-language...

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