Although shocking, terrifying and threatening, Moscow in the early Nineties was also exhilarating – unless you got on the wrong end of a bullet. By 1993, when I made a visit, the shootings had begun, the knockout prostitutes were already soliciting in public with equanimity, the most exotic food and expensive wines were being piled high in the restaurants catering for the New Russians, the casino lights dazzled at night.

The collapse of the Soviet Union is the single most important cause of the exponential growth in organised crime that we have seen around the world in the last two decades. Almost overnight, it provoked a chaotic scramble for riches and survival. From the bitter wars of the Caucasus to the lethal shoot-outs in towns and cities, this was a deadly environment as a new class of capitalist exploited the vacuum of power by seizing whole industries and raiding the state coffers. Accompanied by an orgy of consumption and decadent behaviour, the like of which was last witnessed a century ago under Tsar Nicholas, it sucked almost every citizen into its vortex of violence. Even the KGB and the Red Army quickly became embroiled in this spectacular nightmare, whose repercussions travelled well beyond the Soviet Union’s borders into all continents of the world, as money poured out of the country in the search for safe havens. Throbbing at the heart of these extraordinary events was Moscow.

I had been visiting the Soviet capital since the early Seventies, and was always struck by how joyless it seemed. Now it was unrecognisable – even since my last visit in 1991. The grandiose buildings were the same, but the sudden energy and the suppurating wealth were too much to grasp. This was a fantasy Russia. I spent an evening at a new restaurant, eating food that would have garnered Michelin stars. I was flabbergasted by each mouthful, simply unable to conceive that this was indeed the reinforced- black-breaded and watery-souped Moscow that I remembered. Only the overweening brusqueness and a cheerful indifference to anything non-Russian remained constant.

In two years. Moscow had been transformed into a breathtaking Babylon of guns, enterprise, money, violence and fun.