Abstract
As mentioned in Chapter 1, countries undergoing social and legal transformations typically experience a slight, but relatively insignificant increase in crime. This crime may take essentially two forms: illicit acts (1) committed by isolated individuals or small groups of individuals acting in a nonsystematic way, and (2) committed by organized crime groups. In the case of successor states of the former Soviet Union; criminologists, political scientists, and sociologists are in agreement that organized crime is a major, and perhaps the most important factor, hindering their economic, political, and social development. The activities of organized crime have repercussions, which are felt well beyond the borders of the former Eastern Bloc. Because of globalization, criminality in contemporary Russia and her neighboring countries has an impact on the quality of life and the security of citizens throughout the world. For example, the threats posed by the illicit trade with nuclear materials, narcotics, and human trafficking, and other types of crime, have a strong East–West dimension.
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Notes
- 1.
Thief-in-law (Russian: вop в зaкoнe, “vor v zakone”; plural thieves-in-law “vory v zakone”) is a skilled individual, particularly a thief, within the Russian criminal world who satisfies certain requirements of the Russian criminal traditions and are similar to the “Cosa Nostra” in Italy.
- 2.
The term GULAG is an acronym from the government body responsible for administering prison camps across the former Soviet Union. The word is an acronym for Glavnoye upravleniye ispravitelno-trudovykh lagerey i kolonii, i.e., “The Chief Directorate [or Administration] of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies.”
- 3.
The economic system known as the underground economy, shadow economy, black economy, or black market consists of all commerce on which applicable taxes are evaded. The market includes not only prohibited commerce (e.g., drugs, prostitution, and gambling activities that are illegal in some locales), but also trade in legal goods and services for which some income is not reported and consequently taxation is evaded, through money laundering or payment in cash.
- 4.
Article “The Roots of Russian Organized Crime: from old-fashioned professionals to the organized criminal groups of today” was first published by Crime, Law and Social Change. V. 50(4). Springer 2008. The authors are grateful to Springer Science + Business Media for granting copyright permission for this book.
- 5.
Field-Marshal Count Peter Rumiantsev in the Russo–Turkish War 1768–1774.
- 6.
Russian Marshal of the Nobility 1866–1869.
- 7.
Saltykova was a young noblewoman from Moscow who became notorious for torturing and killing over a hundred of her serfs, mostly women and girls. She was found guilty of having killed 138 female serfs by beating and torturing them to death, but the Empress was unsure about how to punish her; the death penalty had been abolished in Russia in 1754, and the new Empress needed the support of the nobility. In 1768, Countess Saltykova was imprisoned for life in the basement of a convent.
- 8.
Sidorov (1999).
- 9.
Tikhomirov and Epifanov (1961).
- 10.
Peter the Great or Pyotr Alekseyevich Romanov (1672–1725) ruled Russia from 1682 until his death. Peter carried out a policy of “Westernization” and expansion that transformed the Tsardom into the Russian Empire.
- 11.
Governor-general of Finland, Prince Menshikov (1831–1855), was also the Russian Ministry of Navy.
- 12.
Count Fyodor Apraksin (1661–1728) was one of the first Russian admirals. He governed Estonia and Karelia from 1712 to 1723, presided over the Russian Admiralty beginning in 1718, and commanded the Baltic Fleet beginning in 1723. In 1715, Apraksin fell into temporary disgrace with the tsar, who had been informed about disorders and bribery in the Admiralty. After a brief investigation, he was fined and dispatched to govern Estonia.
- 13.
Maliny literally means raspberries. In old Russia, a superstition spread claiming that thieves were taking shelter in raspberry bushes. In criminal world, a malina was a shelter or hideout for criminals and fugitives.
- 14.
Chalidze (1990: 43–56).
- 15.
Russia’s huge Asiatic hinterland of Siberia has always figured in the Western popular imagination as a limitless frozen wilderness, a place of punishment and exile for the unfortunate victims of Tsarist and Soviet authorities. Dostoevsky languished there for several years and afterwards described it as The House of the Dead, while an official government report of 1900 referred to, but dismissed, the concept of Siberia as “a vast roofless prison.” More recently, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago has reinforced this somber and inhospitable image, which, while being an essential, though sinister, aspect of Siberia’s history, is by no means the whole story. Wood, A. (1980). Siberian exile in Tsarist Russia. History Today. 30: 9. pp. 19–24.
- 16.
Ideological communists, or politicheskie, committed no crimes but housed together with professional criminals (S.C.).
- 17.
During and after the Great Purges (1930s), the GULAG camps housed millions of prisoners. Stalin used them both as a source of cheap labor and as indirect extermination camps.
- 18.
Gilinskiy and Kostjukovsky (2004: 181).
- 19.
The thief’s-in-law Godfather, thief-authority, carries responsibility for a candidate’s reputation, moral, and credibility.
- 20.
Ksiva: a written message in thieves’ jargon.
- 21.
Gurov, A. (1990). Professional Crime. Past and Present. Moscow: Yuridicheskaya literatura. pp. 23–30.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Within the boundary of the law meant not to stepping out of a legally designed frame of the law; a thief-in-law (vor v zakone) commits a crime for which he cannot be charged by existing criminal code.
- 24.
Sidorov, A. (2002). Velikie bitvy ugolovnogo mira: Istoriya professionalnoi prestupnosti Sovetskoi Rossii, Rostov-on-Don, p. 77.
- 25.
Volkov (2002: 67, 93).
- 26.
Source: Baldaev, D. (2003) Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia. Steidl/Full pp. 134–135.
- 27.
NEPmen were businesspersons in the young USSR who took advantage of the opportunities for private trade and small-scale manufacturing created by the New Economic Policy (NEP). Their entrepreneurial activities were an affront to the Communist Party and its goal of building socialism in the USSR. Yet so long as state commercial and cooperative institutions were incapable of meeting the demand for goods and services, NEPmen were tolerated.
- 28.
The NKVD (Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del) or People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the leading Secret police organization of the USSR that was responsible for political repression during the Stalinist era.
- 29.
In the USSR, the phrase organized crime was not used for ideological reason. The political elite claimed that communist society could not have the organized crime and corruption; because those are features of capitalism.
- 30.
Gurov (1995: 45).
- 31.
Tsekhoviki are the entrepreneurs in shops, underground enterprises, and large factories, who illegally produce consumer goods.
- 32.
The gray market (or gray economy) usually refers to the flow of new goods through distribution channels other than those authorized or intended by the manufacturer or producer. Instead, companies that may have no relationship with the producer of the goods sell them outside of the normal distribution channels. Frequently, this form of parallel import occurs when the price of an item is significantly higher in one country than another.
- 33.
The system of patronage to senior positions in the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union and some other Communist states controlled by committees at various levels of the Communist Party.
- 34.
In a Command Economy or Planned Economy, the central or state government regulates various factors of production. In fact, the government is the final authority to take decisions regarding production, utilization of the finished industrial products, and the allocation of the revenues earned from their distribution. The government-certified planners come second in the hierarchy. They distribute the works among the labor class, who actually undergo the toiling part of the entire process. China and the former USSR are perhaps two of the best instances of Command Economy. Though many countries nowadays are switching from Planned Economy to Market or Mixed Economy, in nations like North Korea and Cuba Planned Economy still exists in full form.
- 35.
The system of patronage for senior positions in the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union and some other Communist states controlled by committees at various levels of the Communist Party.
- 36.
Database of normative legal documents; “On the procedure of giving and keeping class ranks of state civil service of the Russian Federation by the federal state civil employee” http://eng.www.rosoez.ru/docs/docs_base/141744/. Retrieved December 13, 2009.
- 37.
The Mafia. http://www.bestofsicily.com/mafia.htm. Retrieved December 13, 2009.
- 38.
Gidahubli, R. “Russia. Resolving Financial Crisis.” http://www.jstor.org/pss/4406983. Accessed December 13, 2009.
- 39.
Societies, whether traditional or modern, experience tension between spontaneity (individual freedom) and control (regulation). Consequently, economies as a subsystem of society experience it too. More specifically, they experience a tension between economic individualism and economic collectivism, which in modern economies revolves around the role of the state in the economy. Since the collapse of communism, this tension has manifested itself not as a tension between market capitalism and command socialism but as a tension between the free market and the interventionist variants of market capitalism. Although currently economic and political liberalization is in evidence worldwide, not only in postcommunist societies, its outcome remains uncertain.
- 40.
Ministries of Planning, Finance, and Construction.
- 41.
The Russian version of the proverb “you scratch my back and I will scratch yours.”
- 42.
Komsomol is a syllabic acronym, from the Russian Kommunisticheskiy Soyuz Molodiozhi or Communist Union of Youth. Komsomol served as the youth wing of the Communist Party (CPSU).
- 43.
Business oligarch or tycoon is a close-synonym of the term business magnate. In modern Russia, it is very common to apply this term to any business tycoon, regardless of whether or not he has real political power.
- 44.
Volkov (2002: 126–133).
- 45.
The state Duma (Gosudarstvennaya Duma) in the Russian Federation is the lower house of the Federal Assemble of Russia (legislature).
- 46.
Schit i mech. (1997: 12).
- 47.
Ryvkina R., Kakoi kapitalism voznikaet v Rossii (What Kind of Capitalism is Emerging in Russia). Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya 5, 1997, 80.
- 48.
GOSPLAN, abbreviation of Gosudarstvennyy Planovyy Komitet (State Planning Committee), was the central board that supervised various aspects of the planned economy of the Soviet Union by translating the general economic objectives outlined by the Communist Party and the government into specific national plans. Established in February 1921, Gosplan was originally an advisory council to the government, its functions was limited to influencing the level and direction of state investments. It assumed a more comprehensive planning role in 1928, when the First Five-Year Plan, which called for rapid industrialization and a drastic reduction of the private sector of the economy, was adopted.
- 49.
Bulgakov,V. Vzyatki gladki. Argumenty i fakty, 50, 1996.
- 50.
Rasinkin (1995).
- 51.
Illarionov, A. Izvestiya December 11, 1996.
- 52.
KGBization is the process that took place after President Putin began appointing former KGB officers to key positions in the economy, government, and law enforcement.
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Cheloukhine, S., Haberfeld, M.R. (2011). Roots of Russian Organized Crime. In: Russian Organized Corruption Networks and their International Trajectories. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0990-9_3
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