On the Front Line

The co-op movement is thriving, but has run into resistance from bureaucrats and resentment among consumers

When Andrei Fedorov ran a state-owned restaurant in Moscow, he made 190 rubles ($304) a month even if no one came to dinner. "I didn't care if we had customers or not," he says with a shrug. "I didn't care if the service was good." Two years ago, he started his own now popular bistro, Kropotkinskaya 36, just off Sadovaya Ring Road in the Soviet capital. Fedorov pays himself about 850 rubles ($1,360) a month, nearly four times the average Soviet salary. But he works twice as hard as he ever did as a government employee. "If I don't have customers,"...

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