MIKE THOMPSON is the editorial cartoonist for the Detroit Free Press. He recently spent two weeks traveling in Russia.

UST-KURDYUM, Russia -- A dozen white brick mansions sit on the west side of a muddy washboard road in this small farming community near the Kazakhstan border. The spacious new homes boast two-car garages and 8-foot-high security walls. Satellite dishes sprout from the rooftops.

On the east side of the road are scores of shacks made of stone and wood. Smoke drifts from stovepipes that protrude through corrugated aluminum roofs. Chickens scratch in the weed-choked yards, between haystacks and mounds of manure.

The road tells the story of Russia as the country prepares for the 10-year anniversary Dec. 25 of the end of communism. In the decade since the red banner was lowered from the Kremlin flagpole, a handful of Russians have prospered; most people, though, have languished or fared worse.

True, Russians enjoy freedoms unimaginable under the stifling disaster of Soviet rule. And no Russians I've ever spoken with want a return to the old days.

But to travel the heartland by train and view the squalid living conditions and meager subsistence level of so many people, you have to think that the average Russian must be wondering of capitalism: "Where's the beef?" -- literally and figuratively.

The irony is that having spent nearly eight decades proving that the Karl Marx theories for organizing society were dead wrong, Russia has spent the past decade proving his critique of capitalism dead right: The rich got richer, the poor got poorer.

At this juncture, answers to the many questions about Russia's future are as complex as the vast nation's customs and language.

"At last signs of economic revival in Russia" the New York Times proclaimed in a recent headline. A week earlier, however, a Wall Street Journal analysis ranked Russia as one of the 25 nations least friendly to investors, behind the likes of Djibouti and Botswana. (The United States tied for fourth with four other nations, including Estonia, a former Russian satellite.)

After stumbling through the '90s, there is some recent evidence that Russia is trying to turn the corner. But it remains a tough place to conduct business. Cultural practices, corruption and organized crime, plus an incoherent legal system, have stymied growth and scared investors.

Skirting laws and regulations was long ago elevated to an art form in Russia. An American police officer once told me that the most widely obeyed law in the United States is the solid yellow line dividing a two-lane road. But in Russia, motorists commonly use the yellow line as a third lane, simply assuming that oncoming traffic will steer toward the shoulder.

A Russian maxim, loosely translated, goes: "The law is like a fence. Why bother climbing over it when you can walk around it?"

How do you conduct business in a place where the law of the land is that there is no true law?

Another factor discouraging economic progress is the close relationship between government and organized crime. In Russia, "the government is the mafia, the mafia is the government," a Russian friend of mine says. Most businesses are required to pay a "roof" -- protection money.

And don't get the average Russian started on how government bureaucrats and their crony capitalists carved up mineral rights and national assets among themselves after the fall of the Soviet Union. One observer called it "the biggest theft of public wealth in the history of humankind."

Meanwhile, the nation's infrastructure continues to crumble. As Russians say, "There are no roads in Russia, only directions of movement." The countryside is littered with defunct factories and abandoned, half-finished structures.

Democratic capitalism doesn't just happen; it has to be built -- on a foundation that includes such things as enforceable contracts, an absence of corruption, a working infrastructure. Conditions in Russia inhibit commerce. There is no interstate-style highway system to serve a nation that spans 11 time zones. Domestic air travel is a risky proposition. Away from the cities, consumer goods remain scarce, and it is not uncommon to see a shopkeeper using an abacus for a cash register.

The human toll of Russia's failure to navigate successfully from communism to capitalism is heartbreaking. It is estimated that 700,000 abandoned children cram the woefully inadequate orphanage system, more than the number in the entire Soviet Union after World War II, a conflict in which 20 million to 40 million Soviets died. Because of chronic alcoholism, smoking and a skyrocketing suicide rate, life expectancy for males over the past decade has taken the largest drop in any country ever.

Western efforts to assist have been mixed at best, disastrous at worst. Most notably, billions in International Monetary Fund money that was deposited in the country's central bank was siphoned off by savvy insiders.

"How do you help a country that refuses to help itself?" a Western journalist recently asked.

As in 1991, Russia stands at a crossroads -- whether to move forward economically or to drift slowly toward becoming a quasi-capitalistic economy within a police state. If the latter happens, the question will become, "Who lost Russia?" The answer, as one observer noted, will be simple: "Russia lost Russia."

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