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Business is brisk, owing in no small part to the irrepressible spirit of Moscow's "hoboes" -- the term favored by the city's free-market hucksters -- who engage in a frenzy of buying and selling whatever goods they can lay their hands on. It is difficult to know whether these are the entrepreneurs who will eventually help rebuild the nation's economy or the scam artists who will pull it down. Perhaps they are a little of both. In any case, their impact has been undeniable: last year, by one estimate, hoboes moved 3 billion rubles' worth of goods and accounted for more than 10% of all officially registered trade.
One such trader is Leonid, a lanky, unshaven roughneck who formerly belonged to an elite unit of the Soviet army. After leaving the military in the late 1980s, Leonid spent several years repairing apartments and fixing toilets, until he started brokering Russian-made wine in front of the Kiev railway station. When he was pushed out by a group of gypsies who controlled the wine trade, Leonid turned to imported cigarettes. Since then, he has branched out; one week he may move a consignment of flashlight batteries, the next a shipment of government-issue boots, obtained from a corrupt policeman. His ability to broker everything from investment bonds to manicure scissors can earn him 70,000 rubles a day.
Despite the odor of seediness that clings to the hoboes, many are highly educated. Leonid is studying at a Moscow college. One of his colleagues, a linguist, spends his free time writing a semantic analysis of Communist Party documents. Another is a chemist who puts his skills to work by distilling juniper-berry moonshine for his friends. All are energized by the frenzied pace of street-corner capitalism, even as they fear the joyride may not last forever. Leonid, who once saw "unlimited possibilities for business," now is concerned that the government or the mafia may soon strangle the uncontrolled free market.
But while inspiring to some, this sort of breakneck change seems only to increase the suspicion among many Muscovites that the qualities that once made their home special may be disappearing. Throughout its tumultuous past, this city always retained the atmosphere of a large smoke-filled kitchen, where people gather late at night to share and confide in an atmosphere of unselfish friendship. Muscovites rely on this "kitchen unity" as a kind of spiritual lodestar that guides them in more difficult times.
Now, however, the city is being knocked off its bearings, forcing citizens to fend for themselves. "One of the most frightening things about life in Moscow," says Galina Volchek, director of the Sovremennik Theater, "is this sense of inner, psychological defenselessness; the feeling that you are totally alone in facing whatever may happen." Russians have a word for this feeling of vulnerability in the midst of wrenching change: bespredel. Its literal meaning perhaps best sums up the new Moscow: no limits.