Word: artyom
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...would you shoot? Yeltsin?" Artyom probes. There is a pause, then another sigh. "I don't know. They're all guilty...
...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...
...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...
...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...