This is the cover of The eXile Issue #7, published in May 1997.

This is the cover of The eXile Issue #6, published in April 1997.

Few weeks ago, one of my party comrades brought me a present, a few military pennants. I hang them here and there in my apartment. One, with a sword, clenched fist, words “detachment of special task force” and slogan “The best form of word is action” I have hanged over my work-table. It hang there for sometime, then one day I suddenly noticed the name of detachment below. “Vitiaz” – it said. I immediately removed pennant from the wall. As those “vitiazes,” bastards, tried to kill me in the evening of October 3, 1993. Only my luck prevented me from been killed. After taking over the sky-scrapper of Moscow’s Mayor’s building (the former building of Soviet of Economical Mutual Help, or COMECOM) in afternoon on October 3, opposition masses, and me, among them, stormed the buses, awaiting for some reason near the Mayor of Moscow. (more…)

It’s happened to all of us at least once; out late at night, drunk, carrying a hundred bucks or so, and suddenly stopped by a couple of hulking cops and asked for documents. You don’t have them with you, so you make a deal, pay a “fine,” and move on. No matter how often it happens, that’s as far as it goes-right?

No. What most foreigners don’t know is that there is always another variable in the equation of these encounters, and that variable is a place called the Center for Social Rehabilitation #1, or TsSR. It’s a real building that exists in a place where you can easily find it, on the 24th kilometer of the Dmitrovskoye Shosse- and what it is, in effect, is a secret prison for foreigners with visa problems.

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Two Fridays ago, The staff of the eXile was shocked by the appearance of the Moscow Tribune‘s “Time Out” nightlife section-a new club listings page which included snappy, no-holds-barred descriptions of bars and clubs making liberal use of such phrases as “it sucks,” “whores,” “cool,” and “16 Tons is the King Of Moscow’s Club Scene!” (more…)

Hockey is a tough sport; on the ice, Russians are said to play more of a finesse game than the Canadians, but off it, they seem to be a few Maple Leafs up on the competition. Soon Russian hockey officials may start wearing green lights over their heads so that assassins will know when they’ve scored; the latest victim was none other than Valentin Siych, the President of the Russian Hockey Federation, murdered on April 22 at nine a.m. The assassin used the by-now cliche method of the bullet in the head at nine a.m. in the victim’s own podyezd; Siych was on his way to be interviewed by Komsomolskaya Pravda. (more…)

There’s been an ever-growing competition, particularly among Moscow’s male expats and the women who keep company with them, to prove their decadent credentials. Each carries with them their CV of perversions and drug binges, and brags about their decadent ways like investment bankers boasting about “doin’ deals.” You can’t go a week here without hearing some expat tell you about his drug problem, his 2-on-1, whore-hopping, girlfriend-swapping, the pair of handcuffs, the Trainspotting-esque life (incidentally the most predictable, sentimental, Social Democratic film of them all!), and so on… Coat and Tie has now become Coke and Tie-Me-Up, and it’s losing its appeal fast. (more…)