Not long ago the queues were for bread, but today Moscow residents wait in line for luxury cars, private yachts and penthouse apartments in the city that has the world's most billionaires.
The high speed transformation and is still very much in progress as the US magazine Forbes reported this week that Moscow has outstripped New York and now boasts 74 billionaires.
When a 530,000-euro (800,000-dollar) Maybach limousine was recently stolen it was almost a matter for celebration by Russian newspapers, signalling previously unimagined wealth in a city long associated with austerity.
Newspapers and magazines are bursting with stories of the super-rich and what they get up to in Moscow and in their second, third, or fourth homes abroad, much of their wealth based on Russia's vast oil, gas and other natural resources.
Some of the rich seem inclined to downplay their wealth. Polina Deripaska, wife of Russia's newly declared richest man, Oleg Deripaska, told the Vedomosti newspaper on Thursday of the modest sums she once spent as a student at Britain's exclusive Millfield school.
After spending her term allowance of 300 dollars in just two weeks "I wouldn't go anywhere and ate just the school food," she told the paper.
But for the most part the wealthy do not confine themselves to English boarding school rations, as witnessed by the booming restaurant scene.
Among restaurants that have been hailed by critics as holding their own alongside the best in the West is Turandot, named for the Puccini opera.
Created at vast expense by Andrei Dellos, it features a mock 18th century Chinese-influenced interior complete with musicians in powdered wigs who perform on a rotating stage decked with a golden peacock.
The Financial Times noted approvingly in 2005 that Dellos had worked on his staff's facial expressions to smooth away Soviet-era grimness, "working on the muscles of their face" so that they looked "at... people in a friendly fashion."
The super-rich of course spend much of their time outside Moscow.
Among the advantages, locations such as the Scottish highland estate owned by steel magnate Vladimir Lisin are considered more secure that the streets of Moscow, despite a reduction in the number of contract killings in recent years.
But many choose to stay, as witnessed by the new gated estates around the city.
In winter some follow President Vladimir Putin's example and jet off for weekend skiing in the southern resort of Sochi, while in summer they can be found messing around on boats outside the city.
The Moscow waterways boast several marinas together with bars such as a mock pirate ship and a Caribbean-style cocktail bar, perfect for people-watching in summer, before the boats have to be lifted out of the water to protect them against the pack ice.
Russia's super-rich are also developing a taste for philanthropy, supporting museums, or in the case of Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea football club in England, supporting an entire region, Chukotka on the far northeast coast of Russia.
Sceptics argue that such philanthropy is partly political expediency.
If so, it is not always enough -- the jailed boss of Yukos oil company, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was also encouraged to support the desolate province of Mordovia, east of Moscow, before he fell foul of a prosecution that Kremlin critics say was politically motivated.
But despite their famed love of opulence, evident from the diamond-encrusted hubcaps on sale recently at a "Millionaire's Fair," the wealthy are gradually coming to look more like their Western counterparts, says journalist Dmitry Falaleyev of the Russian edition of the Harvard Business Review.
In part this is due to contact with the outside world and particularly with Western business practice, he says.
"Our millionaires have become more democratic, driving ordinary cars, wearing relatively ordinary watches," he said. "The rich have become more educated and cultured, they learnt from contact with Europe and America."
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yeah.. here's an island too to match ur plane
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