ON THE road to Valdai, the beautiful lake district between Moscow and St Petersburg, melancholy figures stand under the yellowing birch trees, holding up crystal goblets, as in some strange piece of theatre.
They are workers from the Krasny Mai (Red May) glass factory who, for more than a year, have received their wages not in cash but in kind and are obliged to stand on the roadside hawking their products before they can eat.
Cars zoom by, ignoring them. When I stopped, dozens of the crystal sellers ran up. When I asked for an interview, they backed off in fear, saying publicity would bring the police down on them.
But when they realised I was foreign, they relaxed a little. "Come on, guys", said Svetlana, a middle aged woman who spoke up boldly. "The Valdai police are hardly going to read an Irish newspaper.
Svetlana explained how she and her mates worked only every other week at the 130 year old, more or less obsolete, factory because its financial difficulties were such that electricity was rationed.
In theory, they should receive wages of one million roubles (£125). Instead, they were paid in cut glass vases and wine glasses which they sold in the rest of their working time and in their leisure hours. The trade itself was legal, but the traffic police fined them, saying they caused road accidents.
"Occasionally a tourist pulls up and buys a vase for 100,000 roubles (£12.50)," said Svetlana, who has two teenage children to feed. "But mostly we just stand here from morning to night and go home without making a sale."
The Valdai crystal workers - and many more all over Russia being paid in goods from car tyres to kitchen pans - are the lucky ones. At least they produce something concrete. But millions of other workers in the bankrupt state sector, from teachers to nurses and police, are not being paid at all.
In the last fortnight, central Moscow has seen two big demonstrations against the non payment of wages, by people previously reluctant to take to the streets, artists and scientists. The distinguished physicist, Vladimir Strakhov, has been on hunger strike to highlight the plight of his struggling colleagues.
Underground, in the tunnels of the Moscow Metro, unpaid workers are also on hunger strike. And in the Far East, desperate miners have threatened to commit suicide by throwing themselves down mineshafts if the government does not pay them wages owed since the beginning of the year.
These are people of working age. Old age pensioners have even less influence when it comes to demanding their unpaid pensions.
In addition, there are acute financial problems in the army. Gen Alexander Lebed has said that neglected soldiers might be on the verge of mutiny, a situation which could pose as big an internal security threat to Russia as the war in Chechnya.
The economic crisis has been brewing for months. A few cash hand outs here and there prevented society from boiling over during the presidential election campaign in the summer, but now the crisis has blown out into the open.
There are many reasons for it. Russia, while freeing traders to satisfy the consumer with imports, has failed to restructure domestic industry to create new meaningful jobs. Corrupt local politicians have squandered money sent by the centre to support the regions.
But the main reason is that Russia, potentially a very rich country, is failing to collect taxes from thriving new entrepreneurs to pay for a safety net for the rest of the population while reform continues. Thus, with the International Monetary Fund still insisting on a very tight budget, those dependent on the state are being squeezed almost to extinction.
Finally their cries have reached the ears of President Yeltsin, who is working from his country sanatorium, while he prepares for a heart by pass operation later this autumn. Last week, he dedicated his new regular radio broadcast, designed to prove that he is still alive, and in control of the country, to the agony of the unpaid.
Tax evaders were taking the food from their mouths, he said, and he decreed the establishment of a special commission to increase tax discipline.
It remains to be seen whether it will work in this increasingly anarchic country, but even if it does, it will take time before increased revenue can be translated into aid for industry, better welfare and support for fields such as pure science and the arts, which are rarely commercially viable.
As he came away empty handed once again, from the cashier's office of Mosconcert, the state concert agency, pianist Vitaly Mikhailovich, who has survived so far only by borrowing heavily from friends, welcomed the tax decree. "Perhaps the wealth of the super rich will trickle down to the rest of us," he said. "I just hope I live that long."