Organized Crime Prison And Post Soviet Societies

This title was first published in 2003. The "Red Mafia" in Russia have become the subject of increasing international interest and considerable misinterpretation. After well-received editions in Russian, French and Italian, Anton Oleinik's study of Russian prisons, in which he explores the social roots of organized crime in post-Soviet societies, is now published in English. This English edition includes a postscript on the Moscow terrorist crisis of 2002. Oleinik's analysis reveals prison society as a mirror of broader Russian society - characterized by the absence of the state as an organizer of social practices. He builds on this to make a central distinction between two types of societies - the modern "large" society and the "small" society, like Russia, that has only been partially modernized, and in which the world of everyday life, experiences and relationships remains entirely separated from the official aims of modernization and efficiency. Oleinik is interested in the void between these two separate worlds, a void he sees being filled in Russia by the Mafia.

"Cover"--"Half Title" -- "Dedication" -- "Title" -- "Copyright" -- "Contents" -- "List of Figures" -- "List of Tables" -- "Foreword by Alain Touraine" -- "Acknowledgments" -- "Introduction" -- "1 Understanding the 'Small' Society" -- "2 Penal Society in Russia" -- "3 Generalization Test: A Torn Society" -- "4 Institutional Change: Two Cases Compared" -- "Conclusion: About the Concept of the Mafia in the Post-Soviet Context" -- "Postscript" -- "Appendix" -- "Bibliography

A timely look at a widespread yet largely uninvestigated area of Russian life. Chapters include: consideration of the history and basis in culture for the organization of crime in Russia; the actions of emigres to the USA; and the development of modern sophistications of exchange and networking that currently blight privatization. Diverse perspectives, including comparative, structural and ethnic frameworks, give unprecedented national and international insights into a pervasive element of modern Russia.

Organized crime in Russia began in the imperial period of the Tsars, but it was not until the Soviet era that vory v zakone ("thieves-in-law") emerged as leaders of prison groups in gulags, and their honor code became more defined. After World War II, the death of Joseph Stalin, and the fall of the Soviet Union, more gangs emerged in a flourishing black market, exploiting the unstable governments of the former Republics, and at its highest point, even controlling as much as two-thirds of the Russian economy.

Based on over 130 interviews with criminals, law enforcement officials and government representatives from post-Soviet Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, this book situates organized crime in the debate on state formation and examines the diverging patterns in organized crime following the aftermath of these countries' Coloured Revolutions.

The first English-language book to document the men who emerged from the gulags to become Russia's much-feared crime class: the vory v zakone Mark Galeotti is the go-to expert on organized crime in Russia, consulted by governments and police around the world. Now, Western readers can explore the fascinating history of the vory v zakone, a group that has survived and thrived amid the changes brought on by Stalinism, the Cold War, the Afghan War, and the end of the Soviet experiment. The vory--as the Russian mafia is also known--was born early in the twentieth century, largely in the Gulags and criminal camps, where they developed their unique culture. Identified by their signature tattoos, members abided by the thieves' code, a strict system that forbade all paid employment and cooperation with law enforcement and the state. Based on two decades of on-the-ground research, Galeotti's captivating study details the vory's journey to power from their early days to their adaptation to modern-day Russia's free-wheeling oligarchy and global opportunities beyond.

Thieves-in-law' (vory-v-zakone in Russian) are career criminals belonging to a criminal fraternity that began in the 1930s in the Soviet prison camps. For reasons that the book attempts to explain, thieves-in-law became exceptionally prevalent in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Here, by the 1990s, they formed a mafia network--criminal associations that attempt to monopolize protection in legal and illegal sectors of the economy. At this time, the mafia was in many ways more powerful than the state. In 2005, however, anti-organized crime policy was transferred from Italy and America to Georgia. Legislation targeting the thieves-in-law directly was successful in causing a steep decline in mafia influence and organized criminal activity. This book asks how and why this occurred. In particular, why did the thieves-in-law not resist the attack on them successfully? Based on extensive fieldwork and utilizing unique access to primary sources of data, such as police files, court cases, archives, and expert interviews, the book provides a case study of varying organized criminal resilience to state attack. It studies the dynamics of changing mafia activities, recruitment practices, and organization as these relate to changes in the socio-economic environment and, in particular, anti-organized crime policy in what is the first sustained, directed anti-mafia policy implemented in a post-Soviet country.

Through an innovative and engaging analysis of an often misunderstood cohort of organised crime in Georgia, this book explores the resilience of so-called dark networks, such as organized crime groups and terrorist cells, and tests the theories of how and why success in challenging such organizations can occur.