The best known sentence in Nikolai Gogol’s “Dead Souls” is “What Russian doesn’t enjoy a wild ride!” Almost 170 years since the book’s publication, it remains true. Russia’s traffic fatalities, which are bound to exceed 25,000 for 2009, are nearly 10 times higher than in Britain on a per vehicle basis.

But the quote has a sardonic ring for Muscovites stuck in horrific, life-devouring traffic snarls. While the economic crisis has reduced highway deaths by nearly 20 percent, Moscow traffic jams have actually worsened. It sometimes takes up to five hours to drive around the Garden Ring.

The private car was the death-knell of communism. Even before individual apartments were built in the 1970s, tiny Moskvich and Zhiguli models offered ordinary Soviet citizens the first refuge from communal life. Ironically, private cars now sit for hours on end in giant communal parking lots — standing cheek by jowl, since no one in Moscow pays attention to driving lanes.

Russians seem to like density. Even in uncrowded places, people leave each other no space. When waiting in line, they tend to breath down the necks of the people in front of them. In villages, houses stand in clumps, never spread out.

But today’s traffic jams have nothing to do with Russia’s traditions and everything to do with the post-Communist economy. The population of Moscow stands at more than 10 million. Another 5.6 million live in the Moscow region, and about 5 million reside temporarily or illegally in and around the capital. At 20 million, the conurbation represents 15 percent of the country’s population. It is roughly the size of Greater New York, but the United States has more than twice Russia’s population and much less land.

Economists specializing in development claim that overpopulated cities in many African and Latin American countries are both a sign of poverty and its major cause. Mexico City has almost as many people as Greater Moscow. Cairo is home to 15 percent of Egyptians, and Lagos accommodates 15 percent of Nigerians.

The mono-city model characterizes countries that rely on economic aid from the West and those that are heavily dependent on natural resource exports. Egypt, for example, gets about 1.5 percent of its gross domestic product in the form of U.S. military and economic aid. Nigeria, a major oil exporter, also receives aid and borrows massively abroad. The money is then divvied up by the ruling elites, while some crumbs reach the poor in Lagos.

Poor countries have seen cities expand, but their overall population is exploding, too. Even though Moscow has grown 50 percent over the past decade, Russia’s population has actually shrunk. Since the collapse of communism, Russia has all but abandoned its desire to become an industrial power, choosing instead the path of least resistance — relying on its petrodollar gusher. The revenues are funneled to the state and then distributed as budgetary spending. The closer you are to the seat of power, the better your chances to divert some of the money into your own pockets.

Moscow siphons not only the lion’s share of money from the rest of the country, but its most talented and ambitious people as well. Muscovites have multiplied and grown rich at the expense of the rest of the country. Some 20 percent of all cars in the giant country are concentrated in Moscow. Is it any wonder that they spend most of the time in traffic jams?

Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.