Mr Schwarz has a great interview with that Chris Floyd fellow. Go read that instead.
The craziest time was right when the Soviet Union collapsed. Then later they had another economic collapse, right after I left—although it wasn't my fault, really...
Anyway, when I was there it was wild enough on its own. You'd go out to eat in some restaurant, and the next day read in the paper how someone had been machine gunned there right after you'd left.
We worked on Pravda Street, which is where all the old Soviet newspapers were. One guy at another paper across the way was investigating corruption in the army for a Russian paper. One day he got blown up in his office. There was a lot of stuff like that going on.