In a fierce fit of free-market commercialism, ads in Moscow subway insist that the real new millennium will start today. With the economy weakened by crisis, revenues from the advent of Y2K were not as impressive as in the West, and now Russian boutiques, travel agencies and software stores are trying to make up for profits unclaimed 12 months earlier. Here we go: invitations to celebrate New Year with pyramids in Egypt, golden necklaces that will be remembered by grateful recipients until Doomsday, new software with which to log on to your computer in the new year.
There is also a more charitable explanation for this widespread anti-Y2K mood: The year 2000 was not something Russians would like to remember as the beginning of a new century. In spite of both gloomy prophecies and hopeful promises, Mother Russia remained precisely where she has been for the last 10 years: nowhere.
True, the Russian economy is doing better than couple of years ago. Soaring oil prices, which raised prices for Western consumers, supplied Russia with cash to pay higher pensions and salaries. But this is hardly something to be ecstatic about. Oil prices are very likely to drop again soon, and the higher salaries and pensions are being devoured by rapidly increasing living expenses. An average pension of $40 a month is barely enough to buy food, and a retired person in Russia is still supposed to get his or her clothing and medicine out of thin air. Moscow hospitals charge several hundred dollars for a surgery -- cheap by U.S. standards, but a fortune for rank-and-file Russians. Streets remain full of beggars, the Russian complexion is becoming paler all the time, and the only affordable remedy for illness and anxiety is vodka.