The bluish gray waters of the Golden Horn Bay separate Vladivostok like a moat from the more distant hills, and as the stiff winds blow in from the Sea of Japan, people and cars slip on the ice that coats the city's sidewalks and streets.
The striking vistas and the silhouettes of ships at sea give Vladivostok the feel of a portal to a better future, but the weathered wooden houses and concrete blocks that ascend the crests of hills are a reminder that the settlement Russia created here has never been worthy of its magnificent physical setting. Indeed, it is the contrast between the setting and the grim monotony of daily life that best characterizes this city, where all of the problems of contemporary Russia have reached their most extreme expression.
Home to the once formidable Pacific Fleet, Vladivostok is a place where heat, water, and electricity are now cut off at regular intervals, factories stand idle, resident workers have not been paid for months, and the majority of the population of 800,000 is isolated from relatives by air and rail fares that have become unaffordable.
And these are the least of Vladivostok's problems. Sinking into poverty amid its natural riches, the city is almost totally controlled by organized crime, which creates an atmosphere of generalized fear or, as Mayor Viktor Cherepkov put it, "grudging acceptance of the status quo behind which is terror."
No one feels this pressure more than Cherepkov. Every night, shortly before midnight, he leaves the headquarters of the Vladivostok mayoralty surrounded by armed guards, hurriedly descends the steps leading to the street and, with his guards, enters a waiting car for the ride home. The person Cherepkov believes would like to kill him is Evgeny Nazdratenko, the governor of the Primoriye Krai (region), who was also recently elected, although only after having created in the region a system of nearly totalitarian power.
