The Russian Mafia
24 May 2006
by Michelle Calderon, staff writer for AnaiRhoads.org
AnaiRhoads.org - The term Mafia first arose in Italy around 1865 to characterize some powerful Sicilians engaged in violent and criminal activity who achieved control of the local economy. In the United States, Mafia was adopted to describe immigrant Italian organized criminal groups engaged initially in gambling, loan-sharking, and in illegal liquor trafficking that became famous during the era of the Prohibition. Although modern organized groups of today include many types of ethnic organizations, Mafia became synonymous in describing organized crime groups in general.
As early as the 1970s Soviet Union, Mafia described the combination of underground economic enterprises and the officials involved with them, similar to the government corruption that plagued US officials. The Russian Mafia is consistent with conventional use: criminal activity protected by the authorities, against which the ordinary recourse of going to the police proves unproductive. Below are many more similarities as well as differences between the two organizations.
Unlike the unskilled laborers who composed the majority of earlier immigrations to the United States, Russian immigrants are generally urban in origin, well-educated, and highly skilled. Russian criminals did not begin their criminal careers as members of street gangs in ghettos. Despite a language barrier, Russians have marketable skills and were able to continue their illegal activities upon arrival to the US. Russian immigrant crimes in the US did not grow out of the same cultural alienation and economic disparity experienced by earlier ethnic groups.
Immigrants flourished the US at the turn of the 20th century with many experiencing difficulty in fitting in to their new society. This as well as well as Durkheim’s theory of anomie, has been attributed to the rise of the early organized crime groups like the Italian Mafias. While the American Dream is the goal, the obvious inequalities among the many immigrants attributed to their lives of crimes in achieving “success”. Anomie, similarly, fits the situation of present-day Russia. However, the Russian Mafias have no counterpart in the early history of the United States and have arisen instead from the legacy of the communist era. The excessive bureaucratic regulation, massive illegal markets, and the demise of the Communist Party resulted in a vacuum of power engendered by confusion in the legal code and unsure ness about what should and should not be legal. This lack of clear guidance from morality will trouble the Russians just as much as it did the Italians of the past.
The communist economy created a vast array of illegal markets in products and services that are accepted as legal in market economies. Some prices are still controlled providing opportunities for illegal gain in what should be legal enterprise; such as oil. One can conclude the same occurred during the birth of the Prohibition in the US with alcohol and now drugs as the illegal product of focus but worse within Russia’s economy. The collapse of the previous system brought in fundamental changes in social and political order which shaped the personal lives of individuals. Despite Russia’s wealth of natural resources, reforms changed the nature of the country's economy which brought with them hyperinflation, rise in unemployment and an overall drop in the standard of living. In turn, Russians did not develop strong work ethics. Russians were taught that the consequence of honesty was deprivation. As such, like the invading foreigners of Sicily, the internal government system of Russia has made the Russian, like the Sicilian, distrustful of government. And like Sicily, the common method of social interaction, lawful and unlawful, is the patron–client relationship.
While both the Italian Mafia as well as the Russian Mafia followed a patron-client relationship, one way to contrast La Cosa Nostra and Russian criminal organizations is their structures. La Cosa Nostra has a distinct, definable crime family that is supported by criminal activities. The structure is continuous, and crime is used to carry out its objectives and maintain its strength and vitality. Russians, however, create floating structures on an as-needed basis to enable the Mafia to carry out particular crimes. The criminal opportunities come first, and the necessary structure to take advantage of those opportunities follows. This can be attributed to the divided ethnic differences between groups that composed “Russia”. With a land mass that stretches from Europe to Asia, “Russian” does not necessarily reflect the ethnicity or nationality of many identified as part of organized crime. While they may speak Russian and come from regions that have been dominated by Russia, many ethnic and groups and nationalities do not regard themselves nor do Russians regard them as Russians unlike the Italians who do see themselves as “Italians”.
The Russians are adept at exploiting weaknesses in American society. Police departments attributed this partly due to the lack of Russian-speaking officers. While they come with a great deal of education and marketable skills, the new immigrants arrive from a social system where beating the system is a normal practice. They are skilled in behavior needed for living in a particularly corrupt system of acquiring and dispensing goods and services. They have proved to be able and willing to engage in the type of violence that typifies organized crimes, although they prefer financial accommodations to violence, they are essentially ruthless businessmen rather than gangsters. In other words, the Russian Mafia has qualities that could be considered “white-collar criminals”.
As mentioned above, in the United States, Prohibition created the potential for a major illegal market in alcohol. America can trace the growth in scope and power of its mafias to the Prohibition years. The major forms of illegal economic activity in the Soviet Union pertained to a variety of sources including oil. Stealing from state enterprises including collective farms was practiced by virtually everyone, providing extra income to employees. In the Soviet economy shortages of consumer and producer goods provided the opportunity for additional income at all stages in the process of exchange. Goods arriving at retail stores were often set aside for preferred customers who paid extra, the extra funds, not entered on the books, going into the pockets of employees and management. Illegal production was also a feature of the Soviet economy in construction gangs, household and automotive repair, tailoring, and other services. Despite the sanctions imposed on American citizens, the volume of products and services unavailable to Russians created the need to “improvise”. Improvise in terms of the Mafia and earlier forms of organized crime, meant criminal activities for the “mobs” in achieving their goals. In Russia, the opportunity and probably the volume for many citizens participating were higher due to the disparity and unequal opportunity to just “buy” products. This certainly explains their knack for exploiting Americans and law enforcement agencies. It would almost be considered survival to partake in illegal activities.
The Russian government's efforts to combat corruption, violence, and business fraud are severely hampered for several reasons. In Russia, the law itself is unclear and incomplete. More fundamental is the lack of consensus on what is legitimate, moral, and acceptable versus what is not and thus ought to be illegal and subject to criminal prosecution. In the US, the challenge posed by language barriers and the lack of respect for the law that the Russian Mafia’s adhere to makes it difficult to penetrate. Even more so, the lack of structure that may be the result of the different ethnicity, results in the inability of the criminal justice system of the US to pinpoint any weaknesses to attempt strategic planning.
An important characteristic of the United States from its formation (and before) was a respect for the rule of law. The legal system of the United States drew heavily on British common law. The developments of the law proceeded in an orderly way through legislation and court cases on the basis of colonial and common law. As the settlers moved West they sought to adopt the legal codes established in other states and creates legal institutions in the new territories and states. Changing technology and economic growth provided opportunities for business fraud and dishonesty in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Changing technology is always a source of new kinds of crime, but law enforcement and legislation continually adapt to changing technology. Today the challenge comes from computers and electronic property. The question is not a "stage" of capitalism but the ability to respond to change with appropriate legislation and law enforcement and appropriate judicial decisions by building on existing concepts of contract, property, and commercial law. Again, commitment to the rule of law and substantial consensus on what the law should accomplish has characterized the United States since its founding. This has not been the case with Russia. This reason may be the underlying cause of the growing rise of the Russian Mafia transnationally. Translating morality into a statute backed by legal sanctions does not provide for greater morality; it merely widens the scope of the law and creates both temptation and opportunity for a particular set of social actors. Even when the criminal activities of a local mafia are reported to higher authority, there is as a rule no attempt to crack down on them, and the mafia then has a chance to round on those who tried to have their crimes exposed.
Since the collapse of Communism, the legal system has failed to keep pace with these changes, and law enforcement institutions have become fragmented. Lacking coordination, they have been unable to cope with the sheer volume of work in processing mountains of information. The turnover of investigative staff has been high and technological provision low. Without professionalism, morale declined and corruption increased rapidly. With their high-level security training and knowledge of advanced military tactics and weapon systems, Russian military officers are in demand to organize and lead private security forces. Former Special Forces are in particular demand and would be beneficial to US police in tackling the Russian Mafia.
The Red Mafia, though in existence for a mere decade, has become one of the most formidable Russian organized-crime families in the world. Strongest in the Ukraine, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the U.S., Mogilevich has increased his strength by forging ties with other powerful Russian mob groups as well as with the Italian Camorra. Russia is the biggest mafia state in the world, the super power of crime that is devouring the state from top to bottom. The mafia provides weapons and ammunition for the emerging smaller drug cartels who stepped up to replace the enormous Medellin and Cali cartels that were destroyed by General Serano's courageous Colombian national police. The Russia Mafia is as deadly a threat as there could be and it comes from within as well as without their country.
Unfortunately, the judicial system and the very laws that are necessary to fight corruption and organized crime are not present in Russia. In most countries, organized crime thrives primarily through the provision of goods and services that happen to be illegal. In the former Soviet Union, by contrast, “organized crime flourishes well beyond these areas. Many group members are professional criminals; after their experience of criminal life in the Soviet Union, where police were feared and treatment of lawbreakers harsh, they view the United States as a haven. They engage in extortion, insurance fraud, Medicaid scams, securities-related fraud, con games, counterfeiting, tax fraud, and narcotics trafficking. Unfortunately, due to the number of factors, in Russia almost anything can be bought and sold and it means that organized crime has access to things that no one else in the world does: the richest natural resources base, huge scientific potential and vast selection of weaponry for both use and sale.
References:
AMLI. American Law Institute: The Russian Mafia.
Anderson, A. (1995). The Red Mafia: A Legacy of Communism.
Friedman, R. (1998). The Most Dangerous Mobsters in the World.
Roberts, W. (1998).
Czars of Organized Crime.
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