THREE STATIONS—PART ONE.  If Diaghilev is Moscow's Mount Olympus, Three Stations is its lower depths. Officially Three Stations is Komsomol Square, but the locals know it by the railway terminals that converge there: Yaroslavl and Leningrad Stations on the north side and Kazan Station on the south. A statue of Lenin stands on a side plaza. The firebrand of the Russian Revolution holds the lapel of his coat with his left hand and with his right reaches for a back pocket. He appears to have just realized his wallet is gone. That's Three Stations.

Every day thousands of commuters arrive and pour out onto the wide pavement against a counterflow of traders dragging in suitcases stuffed with clothes and shoes for resale in the provinces. Street vendors offer rabbit fur hats, Soviet kitsch, roses wrapped in cellophane, pirated CDs. Tourists stagger under backpacks. Women from Central Asia brush by in voluminous skirts the color of poppies, while soldiers search for game arcades.

Every kind of face surfaces. Blue-eyed Ukrainians, hawklike men from the Caucasus, Uzbeks in caps, Mongolians, and especially Tajiks. A demographic time bomb facing Russia is its declining population and the influx of Tajiks, who are known to be sober, hardworking, and willing to do jobs Russians won't.

But at 2 a.m. the square was vast and still. The misty light of streetlamps revealed what the traffic of the daytime, the coming and going of travelers and peddlers, had hidden. The drunks around Kazan Station were difficult to see at first because they were as gray as the pavement. These were not casual drunks or men on a bender but dedicated alcoholics literally pickled in vodka. So many were bandaged or bloody they could have been a battlefield tableau. One held up a cardboard sign that said "Give Us Money or We'll Die."

Behind the station lay a dark alley of shuttered kiosks and homeless people wrapped in rags and newspaper. Those capable of standing staggered sideways. In the faint light a woman dressed in rags tied a bouquet of lavender. The one kiosk that was open sold vodka, of course. Shadows dashed by. Street kids. "These are free people," Sasha said.

"You mean homeless."

"No, there are shelters. They choose this. Free people."

We watched prostitutes in tight pants grind by. They have a reputation for breaking clonidine pills into soluble powder. Clonidine is a powerful blood pressure medication. One spiked vodka and the customer passes out, ready to be stripped. When the victim wakes in his underclothes, he probably won't run to the nearest militia officer. Drunk or not, he should know that at Three Stations the police are the pimps.