An easily insulted young man with outsized emotions, Gusinsky had trained as a stage director but failed to find a place in the world of Moscow theater. He was a Jew, and he believed that anti-Semitism was the unspoken reason why doors slammed in his face. Jewish directors had made it in the Soviet theater, but not Gusinsky. He had dabbled in staging public concerts and cultural events, and he even helped produce the entertainment for the Goodwill Games in 1986. But those days had turned sour when he got in trouble with Moscow’s Communist Party committee for a harmless prank. He told them to go to hell. In the mid-1980s, Gusinsky was going nowhere. He drove his car as an unofficial taxi, carrying passengers to and from the new international airport, earning cash to support his wife and young son, and hoping to restart his life. Late one evening, Gusinsky, who was skinny and wore a leather jacket, stepped out of his car to smoke a cigarette. By chance, he had stopped near an electric streetcar depot.
