The note about Moscow’s image problem reminds me of how many people are still living in the cold war era of ignorance and paranoia.

A classic example occurred at the time of the computer crunch year, Y2K. Remember the millennium bug? It was widely believed that planes would fall out of the sky, VCRs would record their last soap episode ever while all our pensions and investments would return to their value as of January 1, 1901. Scary stuff.

But this was a nothing compared to the doom forecast for Russia. Leaving Brussels for Moscow at the time, my Belgian friend gave me one of those spirit-filled handwarmers from the Adventure Shop and a thick jotter to write a book. ‘You will spend ze ‘ole New Year stuck in a Russian lift’ , she said.

Experts had graver warnings. In September 1999, the leading IT industry analyst, Gartner, reported to a special Senate Committee hearing. Concerning Russia and Y2K, Gartner’s man stated categorically that:

• Russian utilities will operate at 40 percent of capacity for the first two months of 2000
• Russian transportation will be disrupted 80 percent of the time and telecommunications 50 percent of the time for a three-month period
• Russian hospitals will deal with nothing but emergencies for at least two months
• Russian financial markets will be disrupted for 30 trading days

It was one of many such reports which prompted Washington to evacuate all inessential staff from its embassies in Moldova, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Meanwhile, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office declared two thirds of Russia’s airports unsafe and counselled British citizens to avoid them at all costs.

Russia’s ICBMs were the subject of darker speculation. After ‘talking to experts’ at NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, an ABC journalist became quite convinced that Russian missiles would launch themselves. He warned:

‘Russia’s ageing radar will be be susceptible to failures of the commercial power grid. If the Russians get ‘confused’ by all of this, it will leads to instability and problems. There is a pie-shaped wedge radar gap coming northeast out of Siberia. In recent years, this has led the Russians to adopt a policy of ‘launch on warning’ if they see confusing information on their computers.’

The doom scenario was compounded by the belief that Russia’s nuclear reactors would blow up, multiplying computer and ageing radar errors.

Most columnists at the time agreed that Russia wasn’t taking Y2K seriously enough, while yet more ‘industry experts’ estimated it would take US 20bn to make Russia safe.

Helpfully, Apple hinted that Russia might like to change over to Macs, since Mac OS uses math routines that can correctly calculate dates between 30,081 BC and 29,940 AD. Wishful thinking at best. I’m a big Mac fan, but even I have to admit that Aeoroflot doesn’t crash like Mac OS.

More constructive was an Apple user group which pointed out that the low-cost solution for Russia would be to turn its computer clocks back to one of three years:1916, 1944 or 1972. All these leap years mirrorred 2000 perfectly. All have January 1 on a Saturday and February 29 on a Tuesday and so on. It recommended Y1.972K as probably the best choice, since the Russian economy was healthier then, whereas 1916 and 1944 were both undistinguished years when the Olympics were cancelled.

Anyway, I somehow managed to slip through the pie-wedge radar gap coming north east out of Siberia and into Russia entirely without incident. Which is how I never got to write a book called ‘Five Days In A Lift’.