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 driver of the car was decapitated by the blast.
Such crimes have become depressingly familiar in Moscow. A day after the attempt on Berezovsky's life, an elderly man lost his leg to another car bomb. Two days after that, Alexei Yeliseyev, the second in command at Vnukovo Airlines, was beaten to death in front of his house. That same day two people were shot to death by gangsters during a car chase on the Rublev Highway. What surprised onlookers was not the sight of a high-speed gun battle along the heavily guarded road. It was the fact that a modest, Russian-made Zhiguli was able to overtake a more powerful Jeep Grand Cherokee.
Events like these prompted Russian President Boris Yeltsin two weeks ago to announce a crackdown on what he described as the "criminal filth" plaguing Russia, and especially Moscow. His decree, giving the police broad new powers to conduct searches and detain suspects, drew a sharp outcry from civil libertarians and last week was overwhelmingly condemned by the Russian parliament. Yet it was a symbol of the desperation to which Moscow, the once proud seat of the Russian and Soviet empires, has been reduced.
Today all the hopes, anxieties and contradictions of Russia's fumbling transition from communist monolith to Western-style free market are reflected in this city of 9 million. The crumbling of communism has rendered it a city adrift -- a metropolis that has lost its sense of historic mission and is struggling to find a new identity worthy of its former grandeur. Moscow finds itself seized by a debilitating sort of urban schizophrenia. On one hand, a small but highly visible minority of residents are enjoying the rich possibilities of upheaval. "Life has never been more exciting in this city!" gushes a street entrepreneur. Others, however, are gripped by a feeling of profound disorientation, even despair. "There is no future here," says Vasili Alexeyev, who shares a single-room apartment with his wife and two sons. "Before, life in Moscow was bad; now it is even worse. We live without hope for tomorrow."