RT Article
T1 The roots of Russian organized crime: from old-fashioned professionals to the organized criminal groups of today
JF Crime, law and social change
VO 50
IS 4/5
SP 353
OP 374
A1 Cheloukhine, Serguei
LA English
YR 2008
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1881676161
AB This study focuses on the development of persons and organizations in the successor states of the Soviet Union, with an emphasis on Russia. It examines the development of criminal professionalism in Russia between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and argues that exiling peasants to Siberia contributed to the development of a criminal underworld and the creation of a professional criminal underclass. In the early to late Soviet periods, vory v zakone, or "thieves-in-law," evolved together with criminal groups as a means to survive in the GULAG, these criminal groups operating within the Soviet prisons and penal colonies. Inadequacies of the Soviet system of central planning led to the criminalization of the Soviet economy and the emergence of the thieves-in-law as critical players. Activities such as racketeering, robbery, and other crimes were dangerous but predominantly secondary. The roots of the Russian mafia lie in the innermost depths of the Russian shadow economy. Some of the key aspects of the post-Soviet privatization process are analyzed together with the interaction between various levels of the Russian government and organized crime groups. It is argued that the state was not corrupted by organized crime groups, but rather the organized crime groups became the state. In the new Russia, organized crime groups and corrupt government executives work together to generatea new criminal state.
NO Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 374
K1 Criminal Activity
K1 Human Trafficking
K1 Money Laundering
K1 Organize Crime
K1 Shadow Economy
DO 10.1007/s10611-008-9117-5