The Market

It was a crisp, chilly Friday morning in early April 2014 when I stepped out of the main door of a fifteen-story apartment block in Kotelniki – a working-class suburb 25 kilometers southeast of Moscow's city center – and headed for the nearby minibus stop to commence my second fieldwork stint in Russia. Having arrived in Moscow from scorching Singapore less than 24 hours before, I was dazed and momentarily disoriented by the biting northerly wind. It was 8.00am and I was already late for my first day at Sadovod market. My Vietnamese host, Trang, had left hours ago with her husband – their work day at the market began between 4.30 and 5.00am. Thirty roubles and ten minutes later, I found myself strolling along CT7 – the first linia (лuния, ‘lane’) behind the northern gates facing Verkhniye Polya Road (Bepxниe Поля Улuца) – towards Trang's công (‘store’), where I would be based for the next three months. Friday tended to be the quietest day of the week at Sadovod, as much of the retail activity happened at the weekend when long-distance wholesale customers had come and left, but as I soon learned, the rest of the week was not much different during the economic downturn of 2014. The market was almost empty save for clusters of Kyrgyz, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese traders and shop assistants huddling together around the edges and at the hot beverage carts scattered idly along the linias. With staggering rental rates, ranging from RUB 330,000 to 600,000 (USD 10,000-18,000) per month for a 20-square-meter công as of April 2014, an empty market was a depressing sight. Each day an average công needed to generate at least USD 700 to cover running costs, including công rental, accommodation, food, and hired labor. Yet I was intrigued by market traders’ calm acceptance of the situation – their life in Russia had been anything but uneventful or predictable. Uncertainty had become their way of life over more than two tumultuous decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union.