Rural Palaces Fall Foul of War on Corruption

The Muscovites' rural retreats are alive with the sound of - bulldozers. After years of the new rich ploughing their dubiously acquired wealth into vast country dachas, the authorities, anxious to remind everyone who is in charge, are tearing them down.

The first victim was in Silver Springs, a small but elite settlement near the exclusive Gorky 2 area in the Zvenigorod region. The state newspaper Rossiskaya Gazeta ran a large picture on its front page yesterday of a two-storey building in its mock-Tudor splendour and another, taken moments later, of the bulldozer picking its way through the rubble.

Instead of tearing down the more palatial residences on the land, the bulldozer went straight for the outhouse where the servants live and the telephone exchange is kept. A parrot - the house's only remaining resident - died during the procedure.

Oleg Mitvol who, as head of the federal agency for surveying the use of natural resources, has become chief scourge of the luxury dacha, was on hand with a busload of journalists.

The company which owned the house decided to destroy it rather than go to court, he explained. But without court approval, "we can't drive bulldozers and destroy other cottages.

"I hope that after this case many would think it is better to destroy a cottage than to spend years in court."

He added that the house was destroyed because it was allegedly on land which had been appropriated improperly.

The drama was designed to send a message to the owners of 1,500 other dachas accused of breaking the law, and the other 1,600 hectares (4,000 acres) of illegally acquired land.

The bulldozer has long been a feature of the Moscow woods, albeit there to build up rather than rip down dachas. In the past few years fences have been going up all over the woods as private companies seek to seal off land for hugely profitable developments.

Compounds with names like Dreamland, behind whose high gates lurk fake Tudor mansions, provide status symbols to rich Russians. To a people who can still remember what it was like to all be equal, it is yet another way of feeling different from, or better than, your neighbour.

The campaign to rein in the growth of dachas across Moscow's rural hinterland has raged all summer. Some believe the authorities are seeking to punish the corrupt elite, others that they want to extract "fines" for the land's corrupt sale (a hefty payoff to the state to maintain the status quo).

The more cynical maintain that the government is anxious to get its hands on better dacha plots for its new top officials.

The effort to reclaim these highly desirable stretches of countryside has even reached the top of Moscow society. Alla Pugachova - a Russian blend of Cilla Black and Cher - is being investigated because her dacha may have violated laws about building near a riverbank.

Former president Boris Yeltsin has even been implicated in the dubious acquisition of land for a dacha.

The Moscow prosecutor claims that the Kremlin kingmaker Boris Berezovsky, who now lives with political asylum in London, got 14 hectares of land in 1999 for his daughter by "abusing his authority". Mr Berezovsky says Mr Yeltsin gave him the land by decree, and the Kremlin is trying to get at him and the ex-president.

As usual in Russia, a larger power struggle is at play. And, as usual, it claims a few innocent bystanders - even if it is only a small house and a dead parrot.