ENGELS, Russia -- Judy Neiman has spent the past two years here bringing capitalism to Engels, a town named after the man who spent his life trying to destroy capitalism.
Marx (named after Karl) is the next town up the Volga river -- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were fellow travelers on the road to communism.
Mrs. Neiman, 68 and a former resident of Columbia, Md., came here as a Peace Corps volunteer to set up a business center offering practical help to Russians trying to emerge from 70 years of communism.
"I think the workers of the world don't want to unite," she has concluded as she nears the end of her tour. Mrs. Neiman was one of 100 Peace Corps volunteers who arrived in Moscow on Nov. 21, 1992, the first group sent to Russia from an agency more accustomed to serving African and other Third World countries.
For many of the volunteers, life here was a shock they couldn't absorb.
Only half lasted the full two years, a much higher attrition rate than the Peace Corps average of 20 percent, said Tim Carroll, the agency's director for Russia. But he said the high rate was not unusual for a new program where the conditions were not fully apparent.
"I haven't been troubled," he said. "Statistically, it's understandable."
The volunteers came with high ideals and an unusual profile: Their average age was 41, and half of them held master's degrees in business administration. Their mission was to help develop small businesses, to change the world a little and live like Russians on a $250-a-month stipend.
Mrs. Neiman not only survived but happily prevailed.
She advised 150 clients, developed a warm circle of friends, read untold volumes of Russian literature and even studied some Engels.
"Engels was a funny, witty, marvelous guy," she said. "He couldn't foresee into the nature of power and the lack of competition in a closed society. He didn't foresee enlightened capitalism."
Mrs. Neiman had impeccable credentials for her task here, having worked eight years as director of communications for the Rouse Co., which as a developer is a veritable den of capitalism.
Engels and Marx, who developed the theories that Lenin seized for his revolution, envisioned a world where the proletariat ruled and owned the means of production, guaranteeing them the good life.
"It was a good idea that just didn't work," Mrs. Neiman said.
She was horrified at just how badly it did turn out.
"I get real sore at some things here," she said, "especially at how the government won't treat its people with any respect. I won't even say anything about the toilets."
Toilets are so dreadful here that, like many foreigners in Russia, Mrs. Neiman plans her day (light on liquids) so that she can wait until she gets home at night to use the toilet. Her office is in a government building.
"There are the open manholes, the broken pavement," she said, "in a country that built a sputnik before we did. Yet they don't care enough to do anything for people. It's idiotic and insane."
Mrs. Neiman adapted quickly. "I say yes to every invitation I get, to every insane thing that's asked of me," she said. "And when someone shows up at my apartment without calling, as they do, I come out in my bathrobe and invite them in."
She even found a good place for dry cleaning -- in Berlin, where she visited one of her four children who is an opera singer.
She was able to help some businesses, and watched horrorstruck as others kept up their old ways.
Engels has the world's largest trolley bus factory, which decided to bid on a contract in Dayton, Ohio. "They sent me a copy of the contract, and I told them they had to get a lawyer," she said.
'Parts' as 'profits'
They didn't, went to Ohio without a translator and misunderstood the terms of the contract. "They translated 'parts' as 'profit,' " Mrs. Neiman said, and thought they had to pay 60 percent of the profits when it said 60 percent of the parts had to be American -- a provision that could have been waived with legal help.
"They decided to pull out of the bidding," she said, "and now they're waiting for the government to rescue them. They think they don't have to compete. So you still have that old psychology."
One thing the volunteers clearly have accomplished is opening communication to the outside world in a country that has long been cut off.
One Engels man was trying to reach a foreign cutting-tool company, equipped only with the name Glissom. Mrs. Neiman found the firm -- named Gleason -- and a representative promised to visit Engels when he was in Russia.
When Mrs. Neiman leaves in December, she expects to move to Baltimore, where her son Joshua lives.
"I don't know what I've accomplished," she said, "except I've worked very hard and I've made a lot of friends and I think I've represented my country well."
Selling information
Across the Volga, other Peace Corps volunteers have set up a large business center and a cultural center, now run by Russians. Until six months ago, they said, local university officials were selling information about foreign exchange programs to students.
Now the Peace Corps is not only distributing free information but recommending Russians for U.S.-sponsored internships.
Kristina Gunnill, 48, who has an MBA from Harvard, arranged an internship for a young Russian woman to study marketing in New York at Young and Rubicam.
Twenty-three-year-old Lena Malevskaya, who had never been away from home and shares a bunk bed with a 5-year-old sister, found herself in New York learning the advertising business. She is now running focus groups for Russian businessmen eager, for the first time, to find out about their potential customers.
Ms. Gunnill, who worked at Young and Rubicam and directed the Snoopy ad campaign for Metropolitan Life before joining the Peace Corps, has asked to extend for a third year here. "I can't bear to leave my clients yet," she said. Ms. Gunnill joined the Peace Corps because she wanted to feel her life was making a difference in the world.
Five months into her tour, she suddenly went blind in one eye. The Peace Corps rushed her to Washington, where she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the central nervous system.
The Peace Corps said she should not return to Russia, but Ms. Gunnill insisted otherwise.
"I've spent years of my life working for very little results," she said. "Here, I'm accomplishing something. How could I give that up?"
She persuaded the Peace Corps that it couldn't discriminate against her. And, since her condition is untreatable, she wouldn't be missing out on any medication by living in Russia.
Since then, her vision has returned, but she has no idea what might happen next, or when.
Now she's starting a chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society in Saratov, where she's found numerous people desperate for information and advice.
"It's an interesting metaphor for life," she said. "What part of me is going to work tomorrow? It has you thinking a higher-quality thought process. How will you spend the next day?"
Ms. Gunnill plans to spend tomorrow making a difference.