The total 1998 figure, in turn, fell 28 percent from 1997. In an election year in Russia, these numbers are probably pushed to optimistic levels. Despite numerous deepwater ports and access to the forests and minerals of Siberia and the Far East, the economy is on its knees. There is no Boeing, no Microsoft, no Weyerhaeuser - none of the lynchpins of the Washington state economy. Twenty percent of Primorye workers are owed back wages.
Some companies are a year overdue in paying their employees.
Even those of us who are paid have seen the dollar value of our wages drop by three quarters since the ruble crisis of August 1998. To survive, unpaid workers steal machinery from factories and sell it to scrap metal dealers. They grow cabbages in their gardens and poach salmon from the streams. They borrow from their pensioner parents. The problem with this region is that Vladivostok closed itself to world markets for decades, until 1992.