If the crisis aggravates, he says, he'll sell something like candles or canned beef. The city spent a few boom reform years psychologically abroad, but now it has come back home to Russia. A couple of years ago it was almost a banality to say that Moscow was no worse than London or Paris. Moscow's downtown, with its glistening display windows, offices, boutiques, and thousands of Western-made luxury cars, could impress many as an island of Western civilization on Russian soil. Within a few weeks of the financial debacle, the capital was regaining all the half-forgotten features of the socialist standard of everyday living.
People stand in long lines, waiting to purchase as much as they can.
Over the last several years, they had almost forgotten the custom of storing large amounts of cereals, flour, soap, detergents, matches, ketchup, and inexpensive medicine. But these and many other goods had disappeared from Moscow stores by the end of the third week of the financial crisis. The assortment of expensive goods in the windows of downtown supermarkets shrank by more than half. Customers at a specialized tea and coffee store, where until recently making a choice was a certain pleasure, don't ask now for special teas or their favorite coffee, as if such things had never existed. They ask for whatever is available and are happy to build up their reserves.