Moscow: City On Edge

Mired in squalor, awash in glitz, Moscow struggles to find a sense of itself

Like any reasonable businessman in Moscow, Boris Berezovsky took the possibility of an assualt on his life for granted. The chairman of Logovaz, the country's leading dealer in Zhiguli cars (a Russian-made Fiat), he never traveled without a bodyguard to ward off attacks by racketeers, competitors or any of the city's other assorted thugs. Yet such precautions couldn't prevent a remote-control car bomb from exploding as he walked out of his downtown office early this month. Berezovsky escaped with only burned hands. But his bodyguard suffered severe chest injuries that required six hours of surgery, six passersby were wounded and the...

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