(MONEY Magazine) – Looking dapper in his tailored gray wool suit, Oleg Chekhlenko, 35, strides into his tiny Moscow office at nine o'clock on a chilly February morning and gets down to business. Fielding calls on two phones -- one turquoise, one lavender -- he arranges to hire an ex-KGB agent for 40 rubles (40 cents) an hour to work as a security guard for a retail variety shop Oleg will open shortly. Then he dispatches his brother Vladimir, 33, across town to meet with a wholesaler about buying some Danish chocolates if, Oleg says, ''the price is decent.'' Taking a cup of tea from his accountant and longtime confidante Svetlana Grigorian, 30, the husky, chain-smoking former barber ponders his success. ''I arrived in Moscow from the Crimea at age 16 in 1973, with 40 rubles ((worth $30 at the time)) from my mother,'' he says with a dimpled grin. ''Now I'm thinking of having my portrait painted as an executive.'' In some respects, an exec is just what he is -- though he is operating in the kind of anything-goes atmosphere that the robber barons exploited in the U.S. in the late 19th century. Oleg is president of Globus Co. Ltd., a firm he set up last year to buy and renovate commercial buildings -- and to take advantage of whatever other business opportunities he can wheel his way. Some of these he readily describes, like a contract to supply trucks and storage space to an Austrian firm selling coats in Russia and his effort to buy oil for export from a state-run company. But there are aspects of his business dealings he simply will not discuss, and he declines to provide specific details of his personal finances. While his reticence may suggest that he has something to hide, a MONEY reporter who spent a week with Oleg came away convinced that he is actually a typical new-style Russian entrepreneur, whose efforts to reap a ruble start where the old black market ended. And it's clear that Oleg, a hustler by nature, has the shrewdness one needs to survive -- even thrive -- in an economy where capitalism flows raw in the streets. Many of today's most promising enterprises are yesterday's black market operations; furthermore, the borderline between the innovative and the illegal is not always clear. Officially, the government of Russian president Boris Yeltsin encourages a wide range of private-sector ventures to breathe life into an economy that is moribund at best and, at worst, on the verge of collapse. But reformed tax codes and currency regulations are not yet signed into law, bank operations are prone to frequent foul-ups, and rubles are in such short supply that banks often can't cash the paychecks of Oleg's 20 employees. Furthermore, the corruption widespread under the Soviet regime has grown so monstrously that Oleg openly acknowledges that he must pay substantial bribes merely to obtain many of the permits and licenses he needs to conduct business.

In the new hierarchy of Russian commerce, Oleg Chekhlenko (pronounced check- lenk-o) stands somewhere in the middle. He's a cut above the ragtag street vendors who line Moscow's main thoroughfares selling everything from secondhand shoes to tins of caviar. But he's not in the same league with the former high-ranking managers of state-controlled companies who are busy setting up joint ventures with big foreign corporations. ''Oleg belongs to the class of businessmen who act as brokers between wholesalers and the public,'' says Boris Pinsker, a prominent Russian economist. ''They don't make millions, but they become rich by Russian standards.'' Indeed they do. Oleg provides his family -- wife Irina, 31, a homemaker, and their son Dmitri (Mita), 4, and daughter Aleksandra (Sasha), 3 -- with the kind of good life most Russians see only in their dreams. The Chekhlenkos' diet is rich in fresh meat and imported foods. They vacation abroad, ride around in a new car, and the kids enjoy Western toys, extra medical care and special tutors. But whether Oleg becomes one of Russia's new tycoons or ends up broke remains to be seen. Right now, he is struggling to complete his first major real estate deal -- buying from the government a two-story, 30,000-square-foot structure on Zhukovskogo Street in downtown Moscow and converting it into office space and a health club. When he found the mid-19th-century building, the entire ground floor was vacant; upstairs was a commercial laundry and a defunct bathhouse that Oleg and his staff now use for private parties. He - leased the building for 260,000 rubles ($2,600) a year, set up his office on the ground floor, assumed control of the laundry and began tortuous negotiations with various government officials to buy the property. Now looking for new financing to help with the planned renovation, he wants help in arranging an introduction to one of the American venture capitalists coming to Moscow in search of opportunities. For his efforts as chief executive of Globus, Oleg pays himself 5,500 rubles a month. That's the equivalent of about $55 at the more realistic exchange rates that have replaced the preposterously high conversions that the Communists used for years. Though $55 may seem low by Western standards, it's more than six times the average Russian wage of 900 rubles ($9) a month. And his sideline ventures bring in far more. In total, Oleg admits to a monthly income of around 33,000 rubles, or $330, more than enough to lift the Chekhlenkos into the ranks of Russia's nouveau riche. Such wealth means Irina no longer has to queue up for hours to bring home the blini. For while shortages and skyrocketing prices have forced many Muscovites to subsist on bread (four rubles -- 4 cents -- a loaf) and macaroni (eight rubles, or 8 cents, a pound), Oleg keeps the Chekhlenkos' two full- size refrigerators crammed with ham, chicken, pate and other staples. His sources: wholesalers he has cultivated who will happily sell to individuals -- as long as a generous ''tip'' accompanies the order. ''They even deliver,'' Oleg boasts, ''because they know I pay well.'' Irina gets whatever else she needs at the costly but well-stocked farmers' markets, where people come in from the countryside to sell foodstuffs and other goods privately. She also shops at a hard-currency supermarket that caters to resident foreigners and anyone else who can get his or her hands on U.S. dollars -- as Oleg is able to do through his private deals. In a country where every kopeck counts, Irina admits that she doesn't keep track of her monthly food bill. She guesses that it comes to 2,000 to 6,000 rubles ($20 to $60), depending on price fluctuations. And the best part of being rich, Oleg and Irina believe, is that it allows them to raise their children American-style. Mita and Sasha watch Tom and Jerry cartoons on the household's $600 Akai VCR, lug an enormous $250 Sharp radio/cassette player around the flat and squabble over a Korean-made Barbie doll. Mita wears $30 Belgian sneakers, and Sasha pirouettes in a gold-skirted party frock bought for 35 (pounds) ($59) on a weeklong family trip to London last Christmas. The vacation, financed from wage savings and, to be sure, from Oleg's dealings, was a splurge that cost more than $3,000. Most of that went for hotels, meals and shopping, since the family's air fare on state-owned Aeroflot was a mere 11,000 rubles, or $110. Like the air fare, the state-subsidized rent in the Chekhlenkos' four-room apartment in central Moscow is ludicrously low by Western standards: 100 rubles -- $1 -- a month. The Chekhlenkos already spurn another state- subsidized benefit: free health care. Rather than wait for appointments at the crowded state-run clinics, the children get monthly at-home checkups from a pediatrician -- for only 100 rubles a visit. And another hundred secures the services of a Moscow University child psychology professor who comes to the apartment three times a week to give the kids 90-minute English lessons. While Oleg exemplifies the new Russian, Irina is content to remain the traditional wife. Round-faced, with a bell-like voice and a softly animated manner, she calls herself ''a homebody -- I have no desire to be an educated, independent woman.'' She worries that her husband, who often works straight through until 10 p.m., is straining himself. But she never complains to him about his hours -- or even about his arriving home after dinnertime because of a long party at the bathhouse. ''I want him to have a real rest at home,'' she explains, ''so that he'll always come home.'' Oleg and Irina met in 1986 when they worked together at a state-owned hair salon. They married that year, crowding into the two-room apartment where Irina's brother and his family lived. With rent and other expenses low, the couple saved a fair amount of their combined income of 900 rubles a month ($1,327 at the then official rate). Shortly after Mita was born in 1988, they were able to move into their current flat, thanks to some deft apartment bartering. Irina quit her job to care for the baby and hasn't worked outside the home since. Even as a young man cutting hair in a Communist economy, Oleg wanted bigger things. He took accounting courses at a technical school at night to learn as much as he could about running his own business. When Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev began encouraging the formation of worker-owned business cooperatives in 1988 as part of perestroika, Oleg saw his chance. Entrepreneurship, he says, ''was like my second nature -- only the real one, maybe.'' Recruiting his brother Vladimir, who was also a barber, Oleg organized a cooperative barber shop/beauty salon called the Black Swan. The gamble paid off. A skillful barber who once won an award as Moscow's top stylist, Oleg attracted a number of well-connected clients who proved to be useful in future deals. By last summer, Oleg had saved 40,000 rubles ($24,169 at the then official exchange rate). With that stake, he set out to form Globus. Oleg decided to focus on real estate because he expected to be able to pick up buildings cheaply as the government sold off its properties. He immediately sought a foreign partner, because an enterprise that is at least 31% foreign owned can keep some of its profits in hard currency rather than converting them into unstable rubles, as domestic firms must. He was able to persuade a small Cyprus-based investment company called Parma Trading, which keeps a branch office in Moscow, to put 37,200 rubles ($22,477 at the time) into an investment kitty that ultimately totaled 120,000 rubles ($72,506). His longtime friend Alexander Ananev, 36, a former electrical engineer, kicked in 30,000 rubles ($18,127). Oleg contributed his 40,000 rubles, and he handed over an 11% interest in the company to the district authority (akin to a local council in the U.S.) to secure its help in getting approval to buy and renovate buildings. Once he had lined up his investors, Oleg went to one of the former Soviet Union's newly formed commercial banks and got a loan for 3.5 million rubles ($2.1 million) -- a neat trick for a brand-new business. The loan was for three months, and in lieu of interest, Oleg agreed to split the profits from one of his deals fifty-fifty with the bank. What was the deal? ''Selling consumer goods,'' Oleg says. What were they? ''It's a commercial secret.'' Oleg puts Globus' total earnings from the laundry and other ventures for the past six months at a million rubles ($10,000 at today's conversion rate). While he plowed most of that back into the company, he still has 300,000 rubles ($3,000) on hand. He wants to use the money to start a bottle-making venture with a German firm called Bekum Machines. Yet accomplishing even the most basic business chores in today's Russia is like trying to get orchids to bloom in Siberia. Having finished his round of phone calls this February morning, Oleg climbs into his new four-door Lada, which he bought several weeks ago from a state-owned dealership for 300,000 rubles, or $3,000. ''Typical Russian car, brand new and already the lights don't work,'' he grumbles. He heads for a former Communist Party headquarters that now houses a privatization committee. The process of buying the building is a treacherous obstacle course overseen by competing authorities, including the city council, the mayor's office and district agencies. ''I found that officials have large appetites,'' Oleg says grimly -- and he's not talking borscht. Luckily, today he needs only to leave a document with the committee's receptionist. That means he will have time to check on the 120,000-ruble ($1,200) remodeling of a now empty retail shop that he has rented for 8,000 rubles ($80) a month and will be opening in a few days. He has ordered from various wholesalers the usual jumble of consumer goods found in Moscow's mom- and-pop stores, including cognac, shoes, jewelry boxes and children's clothes. Too rushed to stop for lunch (''I don't even pack his lunch anymore because I used to find it in the car uneaten,'' Irina says), Oleg hurries back to the office, where he learns of some setbacks: Vladimir reports the Danish chocolates he was sent to buy that morning were too expensive, and Alexander couldn't pick up a truck Globus has bought because the dealership hadn't received payment from Oleg's bank. The creaky banking system is ''another problem left over from the Soviets,'' Oleg sighs. ''That's why we carry cash around in plastic bags.'' Leaving Alexander on the phone with the bank, he rushes to keep his appointment at the Ministry of Ecology, which manages Russia's natural resources, to pursue his oil-exporting venture. But with nothing settled by late afternoon, Oleg returns to the office for an evening of paperwork. Yes, the pace is grueling, but Oleg is determined to press ahead, not even letting the threat of national disintegration slow him down. On the night of the August 1991 coup aimed at toppling Gorbachev, Oleg joined the mass of people who rallied to resist the plotters. ''I was in the middle of the street fighting, helping to build the barricades,'' he says. ''When I got home, my wife wanted to keep what I was wearing just as it was, for history. But the next day I realized it hadn't been a coup at all, only a farce. So I told her to wash the clothes, and I went down to the office to work.''

THE ADVICE For the past year, George Reese, Ernst & Young's managing partner for the former Soviet Union, has been in Moscow helping foreign firms get a foothold in the emerging Russian market. He met with Oleg at MONEY's request and offered these ideas: Apply for a reconstruction permit immediately. Foreign real estate investors won't take Oleg seriously until they are confident that he will not only succeed in buying the building on Zhukovskogo Street but also get permission to begin the renovations. ''Like everything else here, winning reconstruction approval is a lengthy and highly politicized process,'' said Reese. ''Apply to the authorities now, even before the building is yours.'' Prepare a solid business plan. To attract investors -- and give them a clear idea of what they're buying into -- Oleg should work with a construction engineer and an accountant to develop a detailed business plan. Keep the laundry going. As Oleg's most visible enterprise, the laundry gives potential investors a chance to size up his managerial abilities. Best of all, Reese promised to put Oleg in touch with a venture capitalist from Houston who might be interested in plowing some money into Globus' renovation project.

Oleg found the advice extremely helpful. ''This session was all I had hoped for,'' he said, adding that he was especially eager to meet the Houston investor. When he asked Reese how to impress a Texan, the adviser replied, ''Just be yourself, podner.''

BOX:

OLEG IS ALREADY SUCH AN AGGRESSIVE DEALMAKER THAT IF HE WERE A CAPITALIST TOOL, HE'D BE A SLEDGEHAMMER.