Private merchants first cropped up in the 1990s on the plazas around metro stations and in Moscow’s ubiquitous underground passageways. Over the years, their makeshift kiosks evolved into more formal pavilions. The shops were ugly but convenient, offering everything from shawarma to mobile phones, often late into the night. Mr Sobyanin, who took office in 2010, quickly cleared out the informal street vendors; last December, the city council ordered a list of formalised pavilion owners to shut down, too. But few expected the demolition crews that arrived late on February 8th. Some shopkeepers hung up portraits of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, hoping his image would keep the excavators at bay.
Critics of the mayor, such as Alexei Navalny, an opposition leader, suggest the authorities wanted to clear space for bigger businesses that can pay fatter bribes. But they also sent a message to stubborn landowners: any challenge to the government can be crushed. Property rights can be “declared ‘a piece of paper’,” writes Andrei Kolesnikov of the Moscow Carnegie Centre—hardly a good incentive to invest in an economy already struggling with sanctions and low oil prices.
Only last month Mr Putin told a business forum that small and medium-sized enterprises should be “the real foundation for our country’s economic development.” On paper, Russia’s business climate has improved recently. But when paper rights meet steel scoopers, the paper tends to tear.
