In Putin’s Trap, Robert Cotrell reviews Volkov’s Violent Entrepreneurs (and two other books on Russian organized crime). In his review, Cotrell cites a passage describing “Roman,” a mid-ranking member of a Petersburg crime gang and “a good man to know”:
At the age of seventeen he received the highest title in boxing, master of sports. After completing his schooling, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in Afghanistan. On his return in 1989, Roman began to cooperate with various groups of swindlers and shadow businessmen, providing them physical protection and participating in violent disputes. At the same time, he never missed an opportunity to take part in local wars as a mercenary and fought in Abkhasia, the Transdniester Republic, and even Bosnia. His current major business is managing the illegal production of vodka from cheap ethyl alcohol imported from Belorussia.
Interesting:
The bandits come from all sorts of backgrounds in which group loyalties are formed and can be depended on: criminal networks in Soviet prisons, sports teams, organizations of Afghan war veterans, Cossack unions, even the state security services. The professional criminals carry out the same basic activities. They intimidate, protect, gather information, settle disputes, give guarantees, enforce contracts, and impose taxes. They have the same resource at their disposal, organized violence. The better they manage its use, the stronger they become. Hence Volkov’s name for them, “violent entrepreneurs.”He distinguishes these bandits of the 1990s, whose techniques he traces back to the street markets and small-scale protection rackets of the late 1980s, from the more traditional type of Russian thief*. The thief produces nothing, and does not claim to do so. The bandit, by contrast, claims to offer services based on the use or threat of force, and wants to advertise this fact. Hence, says Volkov, you could, in any known city during the 1990s, identify the bandits by their gold jewelry, crew-cut hair, leather jackets, big black cars, and assertive behavior. The thief aims to pass unnoticed in public places; the bandit wants to be recognized.
I particularly enjoyed this footnote on his use of “thief”:
I say “Russian thief” here as shorthand for what Russians would call a vor v zakone, or a “thief professing the code,” a professional thief honored by his peers and steeped in prison traditions.
I’m going to have to pick up a fun, true-crime book on the Russian maffiya.