In Europe

showed trends similar to those in a country struck by war or famine: between 1989–99, the average life expectancy of Russian men decreased by five years, to fifty-nine: fourteen years less than the average Western European male. The total population dwindled at the rate of one million annually – a phenomenon unique in modern history. Russian mortality statistics were reminiscent of those in Zimbabwe, Afghanistan or Cambodia; tuberculosis, AIDS and alcoholism became major causes of death. The birth rate, that perpetual indicator for the ‘mood of the nation’, fell by fifty per cent.
    A second selling-out of the former Soviet Union took place in 1995. Three years after Yeltsin took office, his government could barely pay the salaries of its officials. With elections on their way, the president and his men found themselves in dire straits. In deepest secrecy, therefore, a deal was struck with the country's principal oligarchs: in return for loans to the government, they would receive temporary receivership over the shares in the remaining state-owned companies, including several gigantic oiland mining complexes. Because the loans were never repaid, the oligarchs were ultimately able to take over those shares for next to nothing. By this and other manoeuvres, Yeltsin was able to raise half a billion dollars for his 1996 election campaign. He won, thanks to an overwhelming media offensive.
    In the McDonald's in Pushkin Square, I talk to two teenaged girls. Tautly made-up little faces, somewhere around seventeen. Could they remember anything about the communist era? ‘The queues. I remember my mother standing in line for a pair of boots.’ ‘Me too, I was five, I stood in line with my grandmother to buy soap, she had numbers written on her hand, I don't know why.’ ‘But I also remember the May Day parade, they used to give us sweets.’
    Do they ever buy
Cosmo
? The younger of the two does on occasion, she likes to leaf through it and daydream. She earns enough money to buy the magazine with a part-time job, but it costs her a day's pay. But the older one thinks the magazine is stupid. ‘It's about dumb men, but it's written for dumb women.’
    The striking success in Russia of the glossy women's magazine
Cosmopolitan
is a phenomenon in itself. Everyone I spoke to about it had an opinion on the subject. ‘The people have an enormous need for new symbols and icons, for new ways of interacting,’ one person tells me. ‘Most of the bosses here are either ex-communists or criminals or corrupt. What's more, they're usually dirty old men, they can't keep their hands off women.
Cosmopolitan
shows a completely different lifestyle, with modern and open relationships between men and women, bosses and employees.’ Someone else says: ‘
Cosmopolitan
provides new role models for Russian women: unattached women, well educated, working women who are able to take advantage to the fullest of the joys of postmodern society. Women who are in control over men.’
    Dutch media magnate Derk Sauer, founder and owner of the company that publishes
Cosmopolitan
in Russia, can himself only partly explain the magazine's success. ‘The first issue of the Russian edition appeared in 1994. It was Russia's first women's glossy, and it was one of those cases of being in the right place at the right time. A magazine is the ultimate medium for expressing a lifestyle. In the Soviet days, everyone wasexpected to be equal. This magazine taught people to express their individuality again. It became their guide to the new life.’
    The 40,000 copies of that first issue were sold within an hour. Circulation peaked at around 500,000, now it stands at around 350,000, and Sauer is currently working on concepts for new magazines. ‘Soviet propaganda was quite effective: at first, the Russians had a very naïve view of capitalism and the West. Everyone expected huge profits right away, trips to Spain, a Volvo parked at the door. Now they're starting to discover themselves again. Nestlé sells more and more of its products under Russian names. So do we. That's why the title of our new financial daily newspaper is classically Russian:
Vedomsti
, Reports.’
    Derk Sauer arrived in Moscow ten years ago. At that time, the market was bare. Today he is the head of Russia's biggest independent media concern, with 550 employees, two daily newspapers – the
Moscow Times
and the Russian
Financial Times
– and sixteen magazines, including
Cosmo
and the