The FSB, the KGB's main successor, is busy arresting spies all over the vast country. To select a random events of the dozens reported every year - and many are not - the Russian daily Kommersant recounted in February how when the Trunov works at the Novolipetsk metallurgical combine concluded an agreement with a Chinese company to supply it with slabs, its chief negotiator was nabbed as a spy working for "circles in China". His crime? He was in possession of certain documents which contained "intellectual property" of the crumbling and antiquated mill pertaining to a slab quality enhancement process. Foreigners are also being arrested, though rarely. An American businessman, Edmund Pope, was detained in April 2000 for attempting to purchase the blueprints of an advanced torpedo from a Russian scientist. There have been a few other isolated apprehensions, mainly for "proper", military, espionage. But Russians bear the brunt of the campaign against foreign economic intelligence gathering. Strana.ru reported last December that, speaking on the occasion of Security Services Day, Putin - himself a KGB alumnus - warned veterans that the most crucial task facing the services today is "protecting the country's economy against industrial espionage." This is nothing new. According to History of Espionage Web site, long before they established diplomatic relations with the USA in 1933, the Soviets had Amtorg Trading Company. Ostensibly its purpose was to encourage joint ventures between Russian and American firms. Really it was a hub of industrial undercover activities. Dozens of Soviet intelligence officers supervised, at its peak during the Depression, 800 American communists. The Soviet Union's European operations in Berlin (Handelsvertretung) and in London (Arcos, Ltd.) were even more successful. Russia's Middle Class By: Dr. Sam Vaknin Also published by United Press International (UPI) Also Read Women in Transition A conference held, at the beginning of the month, in St. Petersburg, was aptly titled "Middle Class - The Myths and the Reality". Russia is way poorer than Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, or even Poland. But, as income disparities grow, a group of discriminating consumers with the purchasing power to match, is re-emerging, having been submerged by the 1998 implosion of the financial sector. The typical salary in the large metropolises is now more than $600 per month - four times the meager national average. Some 20 percent of the workforce in Moscow earns more than $1700 a month, comparable to many members of the European Union. Real average wages across Russia have surpassed the pre-1998 level in May.