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Comrade Criminal: Russia's New Mafiya
This riveting book is the first comprehensive investigation into the organized crime and corruption that plague Russia today. Describing a society under the sway of gangster bosses, corrupt army generals, bank swindlers, drug dealers, and uranium thieves, the book shows how "mafiya" crime lords and still-powerful former Soviet bureaucrats―so-called "comrade criminals"―have sabotaged their country's attempt at revolution and reform.
Stephen Handelman, Moscow bureau chief for The Toronto Star from 1987 to 1992, has based his book on interviews with more than 150 Russians―mobsters, police, political crusaders, former KGB agents, new millionaires, and ordinary citizens. Handelman traces the roots of the criminal underworld to elements of society that have existed on the margins of Russian life for centuries and that during the last twenty years of Soviet power became an essential arm of the black-market economy. He reveals how organized crime has flourished since the demise of totalitarianism, and how the Russian mafiya has begun to export to American cities not only guns and drugs but also its particular brand of mob violence. And he shows the detrimental effects crime has had―and will continue to have―on political and economic reform in the new states of the former Soviet Union.
Stephen Handelman, Moscow bureau chief for The Toronto Star from 1987 to 1992, has based his book on interviews with more than 150 Russians―mobsters, police, political crusaders, former KGB agents, new millionaires, and ordinary citizens. Handelman traces the roots of the criminal underworld to elements of society that have existed on the margins of Russian life for centuries and that during the last twenty years of Soviet power became an essential arm of the black-market economy. He reveals how organized crime has flourished since the demise of totalitarianism, and how the Russian mafiya has begun to export to American cities not only guns and drugs but also its particular brand of mob violence. And he shows the detrimental effects crime has had―and will continue to have―on political and economic reform in the new states of the former Soviet Union.
408 pages, Paperback
First published April 26, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 7, 2018
Have you ever wondered, sitting back on the other side of the ocean and most of a continent, and getting your news from sources that don't actually know what they're talking about, why Russia is the way it is today? Why corruption flourishes and Putin is so popular? A good place to start answering that question is Stephen Handleman's "Comrade Criminal: Russia's New Mafiya."
Released in 1995, Handleman's book might seem like it should be dated, but it's not. Events have moved on since then, but the underlying problems have only been built on top of the issues that Handleman diagnoses and discusses.
Handleman was a journalist in Russia during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and he scored an impressive number of interviews with people on both side of the explosion of crime that rocked the country: police officers and officials, but also criminals of various stripes, ranging from hardcore godfathers to more or less ordinary business people who are forced to engage in illegal activity or team up with the local mafiya in order to survive. It's an engaging read, and a window into a world that most Westerners like to imagine--we always knew Russia was bad!--but fail to understand.
The key point in "Comrade Criminal," and the thing that explains so much of post-Soviet (and pre-Soviet, for that matter) Russia, is the strange dance between crime and government there. Handleman delves into the Vorovskoi mir, the "Thieves' world," and its culture of "Vory v zakonye," or "Thieves in the law," a kind of ascetic mafia in which members eschewed ties to mainstream culture and considered it a mark of honor not to engage in any kind of government service. This left these thieves peculiarly untouched by Soviet moral and practical corruption, while they had a tightly-knit society that maintained internal order and took care of its own. In the chaos of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this was seen by many to be a good thing, with the Vory v zakonye operating as a kind of shadow government that was often more effective than the actual government.
On the other side Handleman describes the Avtoritety, the "Authorities," who were part of the Soviet and then post-Soviet government, carrying out criminal operations on a massive scale. The problem was that the Soviet system couldn't operate according to its own laws, so a certain amount of criminality was essential to keep things functioning at all, leading to an inextricable relationship between government, crime, and business.
The result, as Handleman discusses, is a country that was drowning in criminality but needed that criminality in order to keep going, even as people placed law and order and security above more abstract considerations such as freedom of expression. We see the result today in an increasingly authoritarian Russian government that nonetheless is popular with the people, who look to it to try to keep some kind of a lid on crime and corruption, which they see as the result of freedom and democracy. "Comrade Criminal" is more than 20 years old, but it is an enlightening read for anyone who wants to understand current events in the largest country on the globe.
Released in 1995, Handleman's book might seem like it should be dated, but it's not. Events have moved on since then, but the underlying problems have only been built on top of the issues that Handleman diagnoses and discusses.
Handleman was a journalist in Russia during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and he scored an impressive number of interviews with people on both side of the explosion of crime that rocked the country: police officers and officials, but also criminals of various stripes, ranging from hardcore godfathers to more or less ordinary business people who are forced to engage in illegal activity or team up with the local mafiya in order to survive. It's an engaging read, and a window into a world that most Westerners like to imagine--we always knew Russia was bad!--but fail to understand.
The key point in "Comrade Criminal," and the thing that explains so much of post-Soviet (and pre-Soviet, for that matter) Russia, is the strange dance between crime and government there. Handleman delves into the Vorovskoi mir, the "Thieves' world," and its culture of "Vory v zakonye," or "Thieves in the law," a kind of ascetic mafia in which members eschewed ties to mainstream culture and considered it a mark of honor not to engage in any kind of government service. This left these thieves peculiarly untouched by Soviet moral and practical corruption, while they had a tightly-knit society that maintained internal order and took care of its own. In the chaos of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this was seen by many to be a good thing, with the Vory v zakonye operating as a kind of shadow government that was often more effective than the actual government.
On the other side Handleman describes the Avtoritety, the "Authorities," who were part of the Soviet and then post-Soviet government, carrying out criminal operations on a massive scale. The problem was that the Soviet system couldn't operate according to its own laws, so a certain amount of criminality was essential to keep things functioning at all, leading to an inextricable relationship between government, crime, and business.
The result, as Handleman discusses, is a country that was drowning in criminality but needed that criminality in order to keep going, even as people placed law and order and security above more abstract considerations such as freedom of expression. We see the result today in an increasingly authoritarian Russian government that nonetheless is popular with the people, who look to it to try to keep some kind of a lid on crime and corruption, which they see as the result of freedom and democracy. "Comrade Criminal" is more than 20 years old, but it is an enlightening read for anyone who wants to understand current events in the largest country on the globe.
September 17, 2019
"Comrade Criminal" is a sort of postmortem for what went wrong, and why, after the old communist system in Russia gave way to some market and cultural liberalizations at the end of the Cold War. The analysis by Stephen Handelman is insightful at times, and he is even-handed and fair in apportioning credit and blame to both the communist apologists and to the overzealous advocates of "shock therapy" capitalism who were so eager to prove the superiority of free markets that they forgot they were experimenting with flesh and blood people. If communism is a coma in this analogy, maybe suddenly inducing a bracing bout of "shock therapy" might not have been the best route to go, but instead rather sent the patient spiraling into a different, and perhaps even deeper coma from which he still hasn't recovered.
It all makes for interesting and disheartening reading that underscores the fact that there probably isn't an ideological solution to the human condition. Under communism, Russia was ruled by a tiny group of corrupt men. As they transitioned to capitalism, they came to be not so much ruled by corrupt men, but even worse, had their assets stripped quickly by people who had no desire to rule, merely to take what they could get and leave with the plunder.
My problem with the book is that the mafia, which is supposed to be central to the narrative, is sometimes sidelined, tangential, or ignored as the author loses himself in the thickets of various theories, Weltanschaaungen, and all sorts of political intrigues that, while fascinating (at times), didn't deliver what the book promised. No, I wasn't necessarily expecting "Eastern Promises"-style action between gangsters who had massive tattoos of onion domes and minarets on their backs battling it out half-naked in steaming saunas, but the book's journalistic glibness, its lack of narrative drive, and the peremptory way it handles its characters is frustrating and disappointing.
This book was written in 1995, so has to be graded on a scale, viewed charitably as an early foray into a very dark and dangerous subject about which people are reluctant to speak for obvious reasons (everyone likes having their head attached to their body). That said, it still didn't quite work for me, or meet expectations. Also, the absence of photos was a bit puzzling, and a list of Dramatis Personae would have helped the reader keep track of a massive and sometimes poorly-delineated cast of KGB agents, Nomenklatura insiders, chemists, politicians, businessmen, and (occasionally) mafiosi.
It all makes for interesting and disheartening reading that underscores the fact that there probably isn't an ideological solution to the human condition. Under communism, Russia was ruled by a tiny group of corrupt men. As they transitioned to capitalism, they came to be not so much ruled by corrupt men, but even worse, had their assets stripped quickly by people who had no desire to rule, merely to take what they could get and leave with the plunder.
My problem with the book is that the mafia, which is supposed to be central to the narrative, is sometimes sidelined, tangential, or ignored as the author loses himself in the thickets of various theories, Weltanschaaungen, and all sorts of political intrigues that, while fascinating (at times), didn't deliver what the book promised. No, I wasn't necessarily expecting "Eastern Promises"-style action between gangsters who had massive tattoos of onion domes and minarets on their backs battling it out half-naked in steaming saunas, but the book's journalistic glibness, its lack of narrative drive, and the peremptory way it handles its characters is frustrating and disappointing.
This book was written in 1995, so has to be graded on a scale, viewed charitably as an early foray into a very dark and dangerous subject about which people are reluctant to speak for obvious reasons (everyone likes having their head attached to their body). That said, it still didn't quite work for me, or meet expectations. Also, the absence of photos was a bit puzzling, and a list of Dramatis Personae would have helped the reader keep track of a massive and sometimes poorly-delineated cast of KGB agents, Nomenklatura insiders, chemists, politicians, businessmen, and (occasionally) mafiosi.
November 17, 2019
Very interesting book about origins, history and the future of present day Russian Mafia, that calls itself Mafiya, just to be able to distinguish itself from it's original Italian /American branch. The reader will discover all kind of sub- groups within this criminal organization. It was very enjoyable read for me.
October 18, 2020
This book seems to explain why Soviet apparatchiks made such a seamless transition to ostensibly free market villainy.
February 6, 2016
Fascinating read about the history and post-Soviet development of organized crime in Russia. May be dated now, but perfectly relevant for my research.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews