"We think the situation is critical," said Margarita Plonikova, Moscow representative of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

"The Bank of New York went to places other foreign banks had not been before and provided good service," said Richard Hainsworth, the Moscow representative of Thomson Financial Bankwatch, a rating agency.

"A major business for Russian banks is to find ways to do transactions in an economically efficient way," said Richard Hainsworth, the Moscow representative for Thomson Financial BankWatch, a credit rating agency.

For a few years until 1999 she was a Moscow representative of the JSC Telecominvest.

He declined to give the name of his company's Moscow representative, because, he said, the last one was killed two years ago.

"Most Russian advertising is still not trying to figure out what the customer wants to hear," said Bruce Macdonald, chief Moscow representative of BBDO, the American advertising giant.

"There is no essential difference between the two bills," said Lawrence Uzzell, the Moscow representative of the Keston Institute, which monitors religious freedom in former Communist Europe.

"We never had had a complaint from customers who said they couldn't read Estee Lauder in English," said Elizabeth Susskind, the company's chief Moscow representative.

In 1931, he was questioned in the course of a meeting of the BP (Bureau Politique), attended by the Moscow representative, Dmitry Manuilsky.

As the Moscow representative of the American impresario Sol Hurok, Mrs. Shapiro also helped persuade the Soviet government to let the Bolshoi Ballet perform in the United States, her granddaughter said.