JULY 3rd was a big day in Russia. I am not referring to the presidential election which Boris Yeltsin won, as expected, despite a last minute scare over his health. I am talking about the 60th anniversary of the founding of the GAI or, as this dreaded acronym means in English, the state motor vehicle inspectorate.
Moscow was plastered with posters and national flags last Wednesday to encourage voters to go to the polls. But dramatically suspended above the whole scene was a huge Zeppelin with birthday greetings to the traffic police. Country roads were strung with fairy lights to mark the occasion.
A few days before the election, I drove south of the capital to Tula, long famous as the home of Count Leo Tolstoy and the Russian samovars. It is now on the map as the constituency of Gen Alexander Lebed.
Several times I got lost on the potholed tracks lacking clear directional signs to this charming city. But the illuminations told me all a driver really needed to know here, that the guys from the GAl were in party mood and likely to be taking bigger than usual bribes to pay for their celebrations.
The GAI is officially a branch of the police. But as every Russian knows, its members are really latter day highwaymen, dressed not in cloaks and masks but grey uniforms with big shiny badges.
In cities they stand on every street corner and in the countryside at every crossroads, just waiting for drivers to make mistakes so that they can pounce and fine them.
In fairness, I suppose I should say the GAI men are human beings doing a difficult job, just like prison or immigration officers.
To mark their 60th anniversary, I did interview a senior lieutenant called Alexander Ilychenko, who sits in a glass booth on the high way to St Petersburg.
He wears a bulletproof vest in case any of the cars he stops turn out to be driven by Chechen terrorists or mafia gangsters. He also has the grisly task of attending road accidents.
For this burdensome shift work he earns one million roubles a month. This sounds a fortune but is actually worth only £125, not a great deal on which to feed a wife and young child.
But it is not as heroes or even humans that Russian drivers perceive the GAI. They are pests to be endured like mosquitoes.
"In all my years of driving," said Pavel, a professional driver for a western firm, "I have never known them to be helpful. They just torment you and there's nothing you can do about it."
A Russian driver's problems with the GAI begin even before he gets a car, when he is still frying to obtain a driving licence.
You can spend years in driving school, but the traffic police who run the tests will fail you over and over again until you have paid a bribe. Currently the going rate for a driving licence is the equivalent of £250.
Not surprisingly, only conscientious idiots take courses. Those who are krutoi (cool) buy their licences first and then learn to drive by trial and error.
"Corrupt GAI officers are literally sending killers on to the roads," said Vladimir Trofimov, an instructor at Moscow's Extern School of Motoring.
When you get your licence, you then have to register your car, and here again the obstacles are overwhelming. You can either queue for months or you can pay £125 and get your number plates in a matter of hours.
Once you have your licence and plates you are terrified of losing them, and this is where the real fun with the traffic police begins.
They will stop you on the slightest pretext. Perhaps you really have broken a rule gone through a light at red, say or perhaps your car is just dirty as you have not had time to wash it. They threaten to confiscate your licence and you opt every time for the unofficial way out, giving them a little present.
The popular newspaper Centre Plus reported recently that GAI officers in the provinces, where people are poorer than in the capital, were not receiving big enough bribes and so were donning their uniforms and coming on unofficial working trips to Moscow to extract more money.
Perhaps it was one of these moonlighting officers who tried to fine me. Although I was stone cold sober at the wheel, he could smell alcohol on the breath of my front seat passenger.
"Your passenger is drunk," he declared triumphantly, when he could find no offence to pin on me.
"Awfully sorry, officer," I say, "but I don't have any cash on me. Will you take a credit card?"
That always works, and I drive merrily on my way.