Gambling took a whole new turn when President Vladimir V. Putin promoted a move that has taken on almost comical overtones. The Kremlin demands the gambling industry relocate to four remote regions in Russia, as far as 4000 miles from the capital. Areas so isolated, no one wants to invest in them.

However none of the chosen regions are equipped to handle the immediate transfer and no casino is expected to open for many years to come.

July 1, less than two decades after casinos were permitted to open in Russia, the industry’s workers have become unemployed.

“This is shaking my life to the core — such a blow for me and my family,” said Irina Mysachka, 32, a single mother, a supervisor at the Shangri-La Casino in Moscow.

President Putin first introduced the law in 2006, when he was prime minister. He talked of the dangers of the black jack tables and the one-armed bandits and of shady characters who control the industry.

The industry is said to have paid more than $1 billion in taxes annually. Various business organizations have been lobbying for a reprieve, but President Putin and President Dmitri A. Medvedev would not yield. “The rules will not be revised in any way,” Medvedev said last month. “There will be no backsliding.”

The gambling industry says the move will leave more than 400,000 workers without a job. The industry has been largely unregulated since the USSR’s fall in 1991, with anyone being able to obtain a license for just $50. It is said the Georgian diaspora have a large influence on gambling inside Russia. It is believed that underground casinos will be quickly established, in spite of the government’s ruling.

“Here we are, in one of the biggest, most beautiful, most expensive cities in the world,” said 29 year old Aleksei Ustinenko, “And yet other people can decide that I cannot gamble if I want to.”

Labourers have been pulling down casino signs and removing slot machines from all over Moscow. By July 1st it is claimed that Moscow would be a gamble-clean city.

The liquor laws prohibiting the sale of alchol in America during the Prohibition period of 1919 - 1933 merely made black bootlegger businesses flourish. You would think Russia had learned a lesson from this.