Perhaps the logo lowers the setting's tone a bit, but automobiles are definitely where it's at these days. In 1990, city officials estimate, Moscow had 30 cars for every 1,000 inhabitants. Nowadays the city has about 1.5 million registered cars, or about one for every seven people. Owners of cellular phones, the other social cachet and the ubiquitous sidearm of mafiosi even in their steam baths, exceed 120,000. It is, but then the life expectancy of males in Moscow has dropped to 57 years, from a mid-60s average five years ago.
Alcoholism is a prime cause, and drunkenness figures in about one of every three crimes.
A Western-style house in the suburbs fetches a similar sum, making Moscow one of the world's most expensive real estate markets. So the grand jubilee marks a time of worry along with hope. The building boom offers a number of eyefuls, to be sure, from the new all-season, retractable roof on the Luzhniki sports stadium to the many older, more gracious buildings whose coats of soot are being sandblasted off. Yet the very centerpiece of Luzhkov's festivity, the golden-domed Christ the Savior Cathedral, is a subject of considerable controversy as well as pride. Its builders have sworn solemnly that the white-marbled exterior, in all events, will be finished in time for the capital's anniversary.