DARKMARKET

of Odessa's gangsters and their lives,’ one chronicler wrote about his
home town, ‘the city's history is simply unintelligible.’

For most of Eastern Europe the bare-knuckled gangster capitalism
that followed the collapse of communism in the 1990s came as a
genuine shock. But Odessa knew what was coming. The Odessites had
no option but to embrace the new era - and, it should be said, they
did so with a certain brio. Red lights extinguished red stars overnight.
Dingy casinos sprouted like weeds behind the Primorskaya Boulevard
and it was not long after 1989 that the restaurants and saunas became
the scenes of gluttony and bloodshed.

Further out from the centre, in the housing estates, drugs became
the currency of choice. Penniless youngsters took to shooting up
boltushka, a home-made amphetamine mix, leaving them scarred,
mentally damaged or dead.

Gunmen and clans from as far away as Chechnya and Moscow
battled with local Robin Hoods for control of the city - because although
Odessa was theoretically part of a new independent Ukraine, it was
entirely Russian-speaking and, even more important, was the only
warm-water port able to handle Russia's gas and oil exports.

Hyperinflation and nationalism destroyed the value of the ruble, the
karbovanets, the hryvnia or whatever else the government claimed at any
time was ‘real’ money. Only the Yankee dollar provided any real stability.

For most ordinary people, Odessa in the 1990s was about two things:
survival and dollars. Nobody cared or disapproved of how you managed
the first or acquired the second. In fact, they admired those that achieved
either, although sudden wealth was no guarantee of a long life.

In this atmosphere, who could blame thirteen-year-old Dimitry
Golubov for selling vehicle registration documents and driver's licences
with the forged signature of the head of the Municipal Transportation
Bureau? If businessmen were prepared to pay for this, surely the trade
must have a real value?

So far, so Odessa. But young Dimitry had something that placed
him in a different world from the traditional city gangland of protec-
tion rackets, brothels, oil and caviar. Instead of packing a knife, he
could drop down from the streets into smoky dark cellars where
computer games like Street Fighter, Pacman and that Russian classic,
Tetris, were busily turning teenage brains into mush. In this subter-
ranean culture the only light emanated from soft-coloured neon shapes