In October 2001 I went to a conference on transnational approaches to economic development in Makhachkala, Dagestan. The conflict in neighbouring Chechnya was still hot and with international organisations on security alert after 9/11 the representatives of the World Bank, IMF and UN couldn’t go. The only ‘internationals’ were a romantic French economist who believed the Caucasus economy could be fixed by cross-breeding the local, scrawny cattle with Burgundy cows, and me, a very junior think-tank researcher just out of university. The local politicians, tall men with long black leather coats and large moustaches, looked past me when I talked about lessons-to-be-learned from Yugoslavia and plied me with the local sweet, thick cognac and ladles of black caviar from Soviet crystal bowls.