THE train which pulled into Moscow's Novoslobodskaya underground station was dark with rush hour crowds. Except for one carriage, which was light and almost empty. Within seconds of entering it I realise why no one wanted to ride in it.
Underneath a turquoise and yellow advert, which read "The Canary Islands now everyone can afford paradise", there sat a bag lady, surrounded by her grimy possessions. She had removed her boots and socks to ease her feet, which were alarmingly swollen, pink and scab encrusted. The smell was over powering.
In Soviet times it would have been impossible to see such a thing on the Moscow Metro the pride of the authorities, and one of, the sights always shown to groups of foreign tourists after they had been shepherded around Red Square. But in today's capitalist Russia the victims of the transition to the Free Market are everywhere.
In winter, when the temperatures drop as low as minus 15 degrees centigrade, they descend into the Metro for warmth. Late one evening last week, I saw a tramp, curled up on a seat, trying to catch a little sleep, as the train went round and round the circle line. But he could not settle for he sensed the approach of 1 a.m., the hour when the Metro would close and he would be ejected by the police to wander the icy streets
For my acquaintance with the Moscow poor I must thank the car thieves who operate with impunity in the city as the police are overwhelmed by a wave of more serious crime. The loss of my third car in as many years has landed me on public transport and brought me back in touch with the Narod the mass of the Russian people.
In a car you see one Moscow, the city that belongs to the New Russians. At certain times of the day it is impossible to move, even on the, capital's eight line high ways for the jams of Mercedes limousines and American jeeps, each with a gangster at the wheel and the fur clad moll in the passenger seat.
But in the marble halls of the Metro, you see the condition of the whole people. If President Boris Yeltsin needs a pre election briefings the state of Russian, society he might find it instructive to take a ride underground.
Stalin may have built the Metro or resemble a palace or cathedral, with chandeliers, mosaics and stained glass, but to me it seems more like an anthill or Dantes Inferno. Millions of people pour down the escalators, sunk in their private anxieties, preoccupied with the struggle to make a living.
On the whole they look better dressed than the Soviet era crowd. Dreary overcoats have been replaced by bright anoraks. Some of the travellers carry Western plastic bags, evidence of their ability to shop in the super markets, which sell imported goods or even that they have been able to make a trip abroad.
A few of them could perhaps afford the package tour to the Pyramids, which is advertised over the loudspeaker system between appeals to report any unattended baggage a security measure introduced since terrorism spilled over into Russia from Chechnya. But for most, feeding their families, keeping their heads above water is all they can manage.
The human river flows relentlessly through the underground passages and few in the crowd notice the poor souls who have been cast to the side of life. They stand with outstretched hands or hats, begging for loose change, some wear handwritten signs around their necks, explaining how they were reduced to penury, but rarely does a passer by stop to read this information.
Many of the homeless are elderly alcoholics who were tricked into selling their flats at way below market prices by real estate sharks who then resold the property to the nouveau riche. The tramps are the lucky one, for, according to the police, thousands of elder Muscovites have been murdered for their apartments, which used to belong to the State abut which are now up for privatisation.
Other homeless people are refugees from war zones, not only Chechnya, but scenes of ethnic conflict which were once headlined news and are now forgotten, like Nagorno Karabakh.
In another circle of hell are beggars, who may still have a home to go to at night but have no livelihood. The long passage connecting the green and the blue lines at Revolution Square Station was lined on Saturday with old people unable to survive on their pensions, injured veterans from Chechnya and the war in Afghanistan before it, pale children needing costly hospital operations and "professional musicians reduced to singing for their suppers in tunnels.
Perhaps the saddest people of all are those who are too proud to beg. Fat Tanya stands by the Novoslobodskaya ticket office wailing "I am hungry" and picking up change from travellers in a good mood. But I doubt she can be more hungry than a bent woman bin her eighties who can be seen most evenings offering a carrier bag full of loaves for sale to anyone who has been too busy to buy bread. During the day she has stood in line to buy the bread and lives on the tiny profit she makes by re selling it after shop hours.