Before being found dead, slumped forward in the passenger seat of a Volga sedan with his
\nforehead on the dashboard and “a copeck-sized bullethole in the back of his head,” he had made
\nhis reputation as a journalist much admired for his reports on the Russian mafia and business
\ncorruption, among other pervasive social conditions hindering democratic reform in the former
\nSoviet Union. Police at the scene of the execution-style killing said the bullet was fired from a 10
\nmillimeter or .45 caliber automatic pistol.<\/P>
\n
The journalist was not Paul Klebnikov, the 41-year-old American editor of the Russian But like Klebnikov, “who began reporting on Eastern Europe and Russia for Forbes in 1989” We don’t know whether Klebnikov received such letters, in part because nobody has yet
\nedition of Forbes magazine who was “struck by four bullets” and shot dead Friday night in
\nMoscow on the sidewalk outside his office, when “one of three men sitting in a Zhiguli sedan
\npulled out a Makarov semiautomatic pistol and started firing,” according to the Baltimore
\nSun<\/FONT><\/EM><\/B><\/A>. <\/P>
\n
\nand “spent years tracking the shadowy deals that underpin many of Russia’s personal fortunes,” he
\ntried not to worry about his personal safety. More than that, he tended to dismiss threats against
\nhis life. His name was Mikhail Milyukin. And he received letters like this:<\/P>
\nYour piece about St. Petersburg’s “Cosa Nostra” was one of the most stupid,
\nmisleading piles of shit I have ever heard anyone gob out on national television. There is no such
\nthing as “the Russian Mafia.” The whole idea of a Mafia has been made up by people like you who
\ntry and make money out of selling scare stories. … Our business methods have to be ruthless
\nsometimes if only because in this stupid, backward country of ours there exists no understanding
\nof supply and demand and free enterprise. If someone lets you down in business there is no real
\nlegal mechanism to enforce a contract or to have him pay compensation. So we break his legs, or
\nthreaten his children. Next time he’ll do what he’s supposed to. A man doesn’t pay a share of his
\nprofits to his partners, we’ll burn his house to the ground. This is just business. You are an
\nintelligent man. You should understand this. And yet you continue to sell us the dead horse about
\nthe Mafia. A number of my business colleagues are very angry about this. … So a word of
\nwarning. Stop it now. Because the next time you choose to describe joint ventures, traders,
\nprivate businessmen, cooperatives as Mafia-run, you might not live to regret
\nit.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\nchronicled his life with the richness of detail that Philip Kerr has brought to the story of Mikhail
\nMilyukin’s life. Chances are that nobody ever will, because few writers are as expert as Kerr in
\npainting a word portrait, but also because Milyukin is, after all, a fictional character. He appears in
\nKerr’s superb, out-of-print, 1993 thriller
\n