A standard Moscow taxicab sifts through traffic along the city's Boulevard Ring road on a mild, hazy winter's afternoon. The windows are coated with a viscous film of mud and grit, residue of city snow turned to slush. Wipers, old and misshapen, scrape slowly across the windshield, clearing just enough space for the driver to spot a stout old man waving his hand from the curb. He pulls over. A few words are spoken, an agreement reached. The man and his wife, both wearing dingy overcoats, fur hats and rubber boots, clamber in.
"We buried my sister today," the old man sighs from the backseat. "She was a veteran of the war." The driver, Artyom Dobrovolsky, glances at the rearview mirror and nods. He has a talker. As he dodges the ubiquitous potholes and noses ahead of less intrepid drivers, Artyom settles into conversation. Like most Moscow taksisty, he doubles as paid listener and anonymous confessor. He is a collector of stories from passengers of all kinds, a street chronicler of life in a fractured society.
"My sister's comrade, who lost an arm at the front, gave the eulogy," the man continues as Artyom starts up Prospekt Mira, a broad avenue leading away from downtown. "She reminisced about fighting to save the Soviet motherland. She sounded so old-fashioned; people stared at her like she was a dinosaur. But she couldn't help herself. She still believes."
"What about you?" Artyom asks. "Do you still believe?" The man's laugh is short, like a hiccup, revealing two gold-capped teeth. "I don't know what to believe anymore. Sometimes I think I should grab all the money I have, buy a pistol and take it to the Kremlin."
"Who would you shoot? Yeltsin?" Artyom probes. There is a pause, then another sigh. "I don't know. They're all guilty."
For the ride, the old man pays 300 rubles, worth about 50 cents at the latest exchange rate but a stiff 10% of the average pensioner's monthly income. Ordinarily, Artyom would have refused anything less than 600. "Sometimes I give them a break," he concedes.
For the past five years, Artyom, 29, has witnessed his country's whirlwind transformation from behind a steering wheel. He has watched younger clients supplant older ones, businessmen replace communists, big-time hoods succeed small-time hustlers. He has gone from working for the state to owning his own cab, a pioneer in privatization. He has seen his taxi meter rendered obsolete by the base law of supply and demand that allows drivers to name their price for every trip. Once fearful of foreigners, he has learned to seek them out, knowing, like all cabbies, that most foreigners will pay more. Through it all, he has listened. "Some talk about politics or the economic crisis," Artyom says. "Others get intimate. Sometimes I get yelled at. And sometimes, more often now, passengers can be dangerous."
Artyom points to the by-product of a negotiation gone bad, a gnarled red scar just above his left eye. Late one night last November, two young men flagged him down. They didn't like his asking price. After an exchange of * insults, the three spilled out brawling onto the sidewalk. At 6 ft. 3 in. and 211 lbs., Artyom wasn't worried. But he never saw the knife, never felt the blow and never realized he had been stabbed until the blood had flowed down his shirt sleeve.