SOMETHING ELSE WE DON'T HAVE IN MOSCOW. In Dr. Zhivago's time, it was starvation. Today, it's vendors on suburban trains.

A group of vendors waiting for a train to depart at the Yaroslavsky train station in Moscow warned an AP reporter not to ask too many questions.

"Watch where you stick your nose," said a middle-aged woman selling pocket fans.

The Moscow railways company denied the vendors operated on its trains.

"We do not have sales on the elektrichkas, God forbid," said one press officer. Another press officer said asking whether vendors operated legally on the electric trains was like asking "Will you marry me?" She said there was no simple answer.

Both press officers refused to give their names.

Russian Railways, a state-owned monopoly, has hired some vendors to sell ice cream and other snacks on the trains, and outfitted them with blue smocks. Some of the vendors selling ice cream wear the smocks, but most do not.

Tatyana Matyushina, an analyst with a market research consultancy, said she suspects the sales are an organized operation. Police condone the sales, most likely after taking their cut, she said.

"It's like a corporation," Matyushina said. She estimated the business could be worth several million dollars annually.

I wonder if Patrick McGinnis, who took a cut from flips of Boston and Maine real estate and sales of coaches (and, because New England is not Russia, served some prison time) ever shook down the Union News Company. There has to be an opportunity for an underpaid railroad official in Moscow to sell blue aprons out of his office ...