Soberity It was late in the afternoon,the sun dissolving into afterglow by the time I arrived for lunch at Alexi's apartment not his real name.Alxei

and Andrew were halfway through a second bottle of vodka,and the best I could do was try to catch up.I was outclassed.Thin as a drinking straw,Alexei was an art critic,scholar,and collector of fine porcelains,an intellectual who became more animated with each round.Andrew was British but did business in Russia and stayed in practice vodka-wise,so to speak.Right off the bat Alexei swore he had seen a video that caught the President of the United States as he stuck a wad of chewing gum under a table of inlaid stones at the Hermitage Museum.Alexei was sure that Geroge.W.Bush had declared war on Russian culture.It turned out he had just gone through the humiliating experience of being denied an American visa.He said the State Department as good as accused him of trying to sneak into the United States was invading Russia through gentrification.There was even a neighborhood in Moscow that had banned Russian cars,he'd heard.Only foreign cars were allowed!Anyway,why would he want to be American,he asked?Moscow was safer at night than New York.He could walk around the center of Moscow at any hour,drunk or sober.




Alexei gave an example,A week ago he had visited an artist's studio.This artist had an interest in Nazi art,in its narcissism and banality.It was a deep discussion,and around two in the morning they ran out of vodka.They were nearly drunk,but Alexei knew a shop across town that was open.They walked blocks and blocks discussing Fascist paintings,sculpture,and architecture.At the shop they bought a few bottles,turned to leave,and found their way blocked by four skinheads tattooed with swastikas and porttaits of Hitler.The biggest of the lot demanded to know why they were bad-mounthing the Fuhrer.Alexei expected to suffer a beating,at least a little kicking and stomping,when the artist,although nearly drunk,opened a bottle,tossed aside the cap,and invited the skinheads to his studio.On the way they passed the bottle around while the artist held forth on modern art,starting with Cezanne.The lecture was so boring and the skinheads became so inebriated they couldn't walk unaided.So Alexei and the artist dumped them one by one in various countryards,and that was the difference between being drunk and being nearly drunk.What this had to do with the safety of Moscow's streets escaped me,but I was in no condition to give chase.Somehow it had gotten dark.Alexei opened a window to the background din of the city,which prompted me to ask if he'd ever heard about late-night racing of cars and motorcycles in Moscow.It was stretch,but I asked.On the Garden ring?Alexei said.That he knew even that much surprised me.Yes.The record time for a car to go completely around is six minutes.Five minutes,he corrected me.Have you?Nine minutes.He signed for the glory that might have been.I stopped for red lights.




Casino Andrei Sychev looked out over the 220 slot machines,30 gaming tablets,sport bar,and VIP hall and confided that he felt like the captain of a sinking ship.As an employee of the Ukarnik Casino he did not understand why city hall wanted to shut it down and kill a goose that lays nothing but golden eggs.Each slot,for example,generated a generous profit every month,and yet the government accused casinos of moral damage,having closed some already and vowed to relocate others to Las Vegas zoness on the far borders of the Russian Federation by the end of next year.To some,a Moscow night without the bright lights of casino marquees may seem like a year without spring,but officals have already closed hundred of gaming sites large and small.Who would be mext?Some of Sychev's dealers had already jumped ship for employment with better security.This created a ripple effect because regular customers like to play with a favorite dealer.Was the Udarnik Casino a criminal enterprise?Abosolutely not,according to Sychev.That is,no more than any other enterprise.Maybe 10 percent.For their own protection everybody had a roof.Don't think of it as the mafia,Think of it as alternative police.Alexei had told me that Americans would never understand Russia because Americans saw things as black or white,nothing in between,while Russian saw a gary area of perhaps 80 percent.Which bring us to...The mayor Not since Stalin has anymore left his stamp on Moscow as much as mayor Yuri Luzhkov.A sawed-off colossus,he raises skyscrappers with one hand and flattens histroic neighborhoods with the other.The floodlights that illuminate Moscow's classical palaces at night are under his command.He garnishes the cith with statues that infuriate the critics,whom he ignores.He is what Russians call a muzhik,a man of the earth,although he and Vladimir Putian have been rivals in the past,they seem to agree that gaudy casinos are out of step with Moscow's new maturity and dignity.Even if Putin reportedly complains that he never knows that what the skyline of Moscow will look like when he gets out of bed in the morning.The feeling in Moscow is that Luzhkov may be corrupt,but he gets things done.When construction funds ran short for the behemoth Cathedral of Christ the Savior,the story goes,he didn't hesitate to shake down businessmen and mafia alike to finish the job.According to one estimate,in 2005 Russinans shelled out $316 billion in bribes.Why not a donation for a worthy cause?It was a happy coincidence that a company owned by the mayor's wife,Yelena Baturina,laned so many construction contracts in the city.In fact,Baturina is the only woman among Moscow's billionaires.