Word: zhigulis
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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...
...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...
Yelizaveta Tyntareva, a lawyer living in Vilnius, Lithuania, a few years ago sold her Zhiguli car for 2,000 rubles (about $3,000). She then used that small amount of venture capital to buy so-called deficit goods, consumer articles like sunglasses and wigs that are almost always in short supply and high demand in Soviet shops. As she bought, Tyntareva also sold. Gradually she built up a stock of everything from gold rings, watches, wigs and jeans to velvet suits, umbrellas and cameras. The business prospered; she acquired a regular clientele among Baltic Sea vacationers, hired four assistants...
...would-be motorist, problems can begin as soon as he decides he wants a car. The cheapest model, the Zaporozhets, a tinny little machine with a top speed of 55 m.p.h., sells for $5,140. The popular and somewhat peppier Zhiguli (top speed: 76 m.p.h.), a Soviet-built version of a Fiat 124, sells for $7,850-not too much above the price of an average U.S. 1978 model, but three times the average annual Soviet wage. About a third of Soviet auto production is for export, largely in the form of a version of the Zhiguli named the Lada...
When a Muscovite out for a Sunday afternoon drive in the family Zhiguli comes to a thickly wooded area about 20 miles southwest of Moscow, he had better resist the temptation to park his car and stroll among the pines and birches. Just to remind him, a NO STOPPING line is painted along the side of the road, TRANSIT ONLY signs prohibit him from pausing in villages along the way, and NO ENTRY notices block all side streets. There is also a forbidding 10-ft. green wooden fence, set back from the road and stretching for miles. If, despite these...