MOSCOW -- Boris Rizhak, a scientist at a well-regarded research institute for 20 years, is working as a driver these days, running errands for a foreign journalist.
Regina Tolstikh still teaches her beloved and promising young pianists at a Moscow music school, but she keeps herself alive by selling her hand-sewn dolls to tourists.
A surgeon from a prestigious Moscow hospital has become a butcher at a Western-owned supermarket because it pays far more.
They are typical of the stories one hears about people who spent their lives studying -- or conniving -- for jobs that suddenly became worthless after the old Soviet empire collapsed. Many people with high professional training are doing the most mundane jobs to survive.
They suffered what for the average person would be a series of killing blows -- surviving the destruction of their national pride only to endure the loss of their personal pride. But the kind of people who could outlast 70 years of communism have, often to their own surprise, found the inner resources to adapt to capitalism.
For some, the humiliation is insurmountable. The surgeon-butcher, who still works at his hospital on weekends so he won't lose his certification, could not bring himself to discuss his change in jobs.
Mrs. Tolstikh, who has taught for 30 years at Moscow Music School No. 73, decided she had to face the future. Teachers, doctors, academics and others on the public payroll don't make enough to live in a city where prices are nearly as high as in America and salaries are far lower.
"Now I make $50 a month," she said. "How can I live on that?"
Salaries are paid in rubles, a currency that has lost so much value as to be nearly worthless: In Soviet times, $1 would buy somewhat less than one ruble; it now buys somewhat more than 3,300.
Mrs. Tolstikh always liked to sew for a hobby; now she has turned it into a lifeline. She sews beautiful dolls, dressed in traditional clothes. She has researched the styles for numerous regions of Russia and meticulously duplicated them. Tourists love them.
Now, every Saturday and Sunday, Mrs. Tolstikh stands at an outdoor market in Moscow and sells her work, explaining every stitch and detail to potential customers.
A doll takes her a week to make, and she will sell it for $25 to $30, even though some of her admirers have urged her to charge more.
"I worry I'm not spending enough time with my students," she said. "How will they do this spring? But I just don't have any choice."
Mrs. Tolstikh is among the lucky ones. She is proud of what she turns out, at school and at her sewing machine.
Others, like the surgeon, have taken their reduced circumstances personally. The Soviet Union, despite all its slogans saluting the working man and its proclamations about a classless society, operated according to a brutal system of privilege and position. Anyone who could escape the working class looked down with contempt on those left behind.
In America, an aerospace engineer who lost his job and took up bus driving would be admired for not giving up. Here, where the state was supposed to provide for everyone, he would be deeply pitied for losing face.
Mr. Rizhak, a senior researcher at the Central Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Projects of Residential and Public Buildings for 20 years, remembers meeting a young American in the early days of perestroika who blithely told him that if he couldn't get a job at home right away, he could always sell ice cream.
"I never could do that," Mr. Rizhak remembers telling the American. For Mr. Rizhak, it seemed as clear as his own name: A researcher should not have to suffer the indignity of doing work other than the research for which he was trained.
Mr. Rizhak, 47, has changed enormously since then. The destruction of the economy and the collapse of the ruble have meant that menial jobs with foreign companies, which pay dollars, offer much higher wages than prestigious jobs with Russian organizations.
Anyone who works exclusively for the government, especially doctors, teachers and scientists, now finds himself living in poverty.
For the past three years, Mr. Rizhak, the holder of several patents and the winner of scientific medals, has worked as a driver for an Australian journalist.
Mr. Rizhak spends his working hours driving the reporter to interviews, buying gasoline (nearly a full-time job here), maintaining the car and running errands like buying airplane and train tickets and searching the city for cat box litter for his employer's cats.
From the window of his newspaper office, Mr. Rizhak can see cooling devices he developed on the roof of a nearby bank building.
The other day, he drove his employer to a museum for an interview, and Mr. Rizhak toured the displays. He saw a model of one of his patented processes on display.
"Today," Mr. Rizhak said, "I understand that American quite well." Unable to make a living any other way, he performs work that is the equivalent of selling ice cream.
He was able to make the transition relatively easily because the Australian who hired him immediately treated him with dignity and respect.
"I was shocked when he smiled and said, 'Could you please . . .' Of course I could do it -- it was my job," he said. "My chief at the institute was a vampire. He drank blood. He was always grimacing and shouting orders."
Mr. Rizhak feels useful now. His employer would have difficulty working without him. At the institute, there were some periods when no work was done for a year -- until December, when everyone had to feverishly fill out reports documenting how much work had been done.
"I worked there 20 years," he said, "but 90 percent of what I did was wasted."
Mr. Rizhak does not mourn the past. He and his wife have centered their lives on their family -- they have four children, and they are notably close and loving.
"Of course there are regrets," he said. "I studied six years to be a scientist, and it's hard to understand what will happen tomorrow. But all I care about is feeding my family."
The new Russia makes extraordinary demands on such resilient people.
The family has lived frugally for the past three years, and has taken advantage of Mr. Rizhak's being paid in dollars. The two older children have taken baby-sitting jobs to help out. So the family finally attained a long-held dream.
They bought a small cottage in the countryside outside Moscow, where they thought the air would be better for their youngest child, a 5-year-old boy who is handicapped after having been deprived of oxygen at birth.
One evening a few weeks ago, masked gunmen broke in and demanded $100,000. In these times, anyone buying even a modest house could be presumed to have great wealth. Mr. Rizhak gave the thieves all he had -- $300.
The gunmen said they would be back for the rest.
Mr. Rizhak began negotiating with the local mafia to find out who was threatening him and what could be done. He expects to find out in a few days how much protection he'll have to pay. He kept asking what he had done to provoke such an attack.
"You bought a house," the local bosses told him again and again. Yelena Bubnikhina is one of very few people who talks about a nation that must pay for the errors of the past. Once a teacher in the old Russian city of Kostroma, she now works long days as a tour guide and gives private English lessons at night.
The other day, she was recounting to a busload of American and Swiss tourists some of the atrocities committed in her city during the Communist years.
She talked about the destroyed churches, the damaged lives, the failed economy, the poverty that many elderly people must now endure.
"Now we are being punished," she said, "for all the years we kept silent."