Customer Reviews

Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America

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RED MAFIYA by Robert Friedman is a report on some of the figures and actions of the Russian mob in the United States today. Although, there are some claims that this book is "anti-Semitic," the author is himself Jewish. Friedman was a brave author to write and publish this because of the nature of the criminals he is trying to expose.

The Russian mob has been making tremendous headway in its criminal undertakings since it first took root in the 1970's. It is made up of many Soviet emigres who were brought over to the US because of some of their "refugee" status. Many are Jews brought over through the auspices of Jewish aid and refugee organizations. The two largest centers of Russian mob activity are Brighton Beach (in Brooklyn) and Miami. Many of its members are brilliant and highly educated, some holding PhDs in engineering, mathematics and economics. They have been involved in pretty much everything in which illegal money is to be made: the drug trade, prostitution, sex-clubs, gasoline bootlegging to avoid excise taxes, money laundering, arms deals, extortion, possibly rigging NHL games, jewelry theft and smuggling, the list goes on and on...

One of the reasons for the Mafiya's success is that is has two entire countries to base themselves in: Russia and Israel. Russia is completely corrupt with a crumbling economy and infrastructure. Israel offers a safe haven because it does not extradite its citizens and any Jew fleeing peresecution can seek refuge there. Israel also has very lax banking laws, to encourage the income of capital, so billions of dollars have been illegally laundered there over the years. Most of the top players in the Russian mob are Jewish, including Elson, Agron, Nayfeld, Balagula, noted author Yuri Brokhin, politically connected orthodox Rabbi Ronald Greenwald, Ludwig "Tarzan" Fainburg and the most powerful, Semion Mogilevich. Some, like Ivankov, are not Jewish but hold Israeli citizenship. The fact that many of the mobsters are Jewish is mentioned by Friedman as a cause of law-enforcement's lack of motivation in tackling the issue because it would inflame extremly sensitive political interests. Prominient names appear in this book who have had cameos with mobsters--all the way up to Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

The demise, dissolution, breakup, choose your own word, of The Former Soviet Union is about as dramatic a Historical Event as one is likely to witness. It is not a simple topic, what has happened, and what will continue to evolve will fill hundreds of books well into the future. Attempting an overview of what is presented, as the largest illegal transfer of wealth on record cannot be done in 288 pages even if the pages are microfilm! Every time this book began to focus on a specific event, it would jump to the next.

There is more information in this 288-page book than anyone can possibly digest. Trying to keep track of the organizational structure of the "Mafiyas", and their relationships to each other, would take a Cray Supercomputer. The Author also touches on Historical events of huge import, theories on what may result from them, and they too are quickly abandoned, before any real exposition has been offered.

There is a theory that the wealth that has been removed from Russia/The Former Soviet Union could have similar effects politically as The Versailles Treaty of WW I had on Germany. It's an interesting idea, may warrant a book, but not the shallow mention it receives here. There are at least a dozen similar theories that are intriguing in the extreme. These cannot be treated like bulleted points in a memo.

This is a highlight book of illegal activity that spans from Meyer Lansky to the present. One of the problems is names like Genovese, Gambino, and Gotti, are familiar to readers of the genre. This book mentioned hundreds of organizations, and half the Countries on the Planet! You are rushed through diamond mines in Sierra Leone, Switzerland, Germany, Israel, Cuba, Azerbaijan, Turkey Brighton Beach Restaurants, half of South America, virtually all of North America, and nearly every state in the U.S. And there are the 14 time zones of Russia and the Prison System of The Gulags across Siberia.

The Author clearly knows his subject. I would hope he would take the time, slow down, and concentrate on depth rather than breadth.

No other report on the many-tentacled Russian mafia has yet been assembled. Friedman, a veteran investigative reporter, takes the reader deep inside this shadowy world, illuminating the terrifying truth behind recent headlines about the Russian mafia in the United States.

If anything, the book is too ambitious: the level of detail and breadth of its coverage is so extensive that some may wish that it focused on a single crime family or era instead of attempting to tell the entire story of the Russian mafia, which has its roots as far back as Czarist Russia. This book is simply much bigger in scope than most books, movies or television shows about any form of organized crime--Russian or not--tend to attempt. Yet if the book suffers from its breadth, summarizing important historical developments too briefly, it also makes a virtue of its intimate, character-driven narrative. A gripping tale that brings the reader into the netherworld of the Russian mafia and introduces him personally to the individuals who live and die by the AK-47.

A short note: Some in the Russian-American community have found this book to be offensive, believing that the author treats all Russians as if they are criminals. As a non-Russian or Russian-American, I did not find this to be so. I understand the fear of stereotype felt by Russian and Russian-Americans, but this complaint sounded similar to the ones expressed by Italiam-Americans when books and reports about La Cosa Nostra came out. The subject is Russian criminals, so many of the Russians in the book are criminals, but nowhere did I see racist, biased treatments of all Russians as criminals. It is true that, because the Russian mafia began before the breakup of the Soviet Union, the term "Russian" is used broadly. However, the author always seemed to identify the individual figures in the book by their specific roots, whether Ukranian, Russian, etc.

Books that claim to take readers inside a subject often fail to deliver. But Red Mafiya really does give you the inside scoop on the Russian mob in America. And unlike many investigative books that are densely written and difficult to read, this book is hard to put down. Friedman vividly reconstructs murder investigations, describes kidnapping attempts and recounts the how the FBI tracked down a criminal in Russia. It's not all blood and gore either. It made me laugh when one mobster insists on inspecting the boots of a rival gang in order to find the person who shot him. It made me feel sorry for hard-working police who are trying to combat the crime wave without the support needed to succeed. And it made me angry to see how many of these criminals are using the millions they've looted from the former Soviet Union to buy up expensive real estate in this country.

My introduction to the presence of the Russian Mafiya in the USA was limited to "Red Heat" (you remember...that movie starring Ahhnold and Jim Beluchi) and select episodes of HBO's The Sopranos.

This book is a terrifying eye-opener to the destructive presence and success the Mafiya has been enjoying for the last two decades.

This is a definite must-read for mobaholics and it's an easy read. Robert Friedman writes for Vanity Fair, and he brings to the book the same gritty, petty, gossipy, delightfully-detailed view that you get from a Vanity Fair feature.

Red Mafiya offers up a whole new cast of characters for Mob affecionados...but there are some names in this book you will recognize, e.g Marc Rich (recipient of a W. J. Clinton pardon).

It's hard for me to say this, but, kudos to Janet Reno, who according to Friedman, finally gave the FBI a green light and funding to begin a task force on the Russian mob.

A journalistic treatment of the international Russian crime syndicate with special focus on New York's Russian immigrant community. The book covers the exploits of a series of Russian born mobsters portrayed as more depraved, ruthless, sadistic and cunning than their Italian counterparts. We meet characters such as Monya Elson, who Friedman describes as a sadistic contract killer with more than a hundred "hits." Many of the characters were common criminals in Russia who served time in the Gulag, an experience that honed their criminal skills and exacerbated their depravity. Beginning in the early 1970's Russian Jews gained entrance to the US in large numbers, many settling in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn. The criminals came with them by exploiting their official Soviet status as Jewish nationals. Since the 1970's the Russian Mafiya has spread world-wide with clusters in the US, Israel, Switzerland, and other European cities. Friedman asserts that the western investment in Russia has mostly enriched the Mafiya which now essentially controls the country.

The book presents a startling and very frightening picture of the size and influence of the Russian criminal empire. The state of Israel is described as a money laundering center because its banks will accept large cash deposits with asking questions. Moreover, the Israeli government has been compromised by Russian mob influence. The US government is described as lax on fighting the Russian Mafiya, with the FBI and the CIA reined in by the Clinton administration. Friedman says that Al Gore rejected a CIA report on Victor Chernomyrdin (former Russian Premier) which proved him to be "mobbed up."

How seriously should we take this book? I don't know. Friedman provides little documentation for his assertions. But given the nature of the material, we can't expect him to name his sources. We are left to see how history will unfold.

An interesting look at organized crime, but only a cross section.

The good aspects include the explanation of some of the scams that organized crime operates, and the way that local organizations interoperate with their foreign colleagues. The scams, while far from exhaustive in the context of Russian organized crime (and a drop in the bucket of all organized crime), do well to explain to the reader how these syndicates make money in an entertaining manner.

The drawback is that this is a cross section; not an in-depth view of any of the facets of this particular flavor of organized crime. Any single topic (eg diamonds, gas bootlegging, currency manipulation, equity flight) could alone fill a larger book. This shallowness, and the author's assertions that the figures named are the end-all of organized crime, will mislead the less-experienced reader into underestimating the degree to which organized crime is involved in world commerce.

For all that, it is a fun read. While it overstates the specific and under-reports the general problems, that is an artifact of its entertainment-orientation. Taken with a grain of salt, it is an enjoyable book.

RED MAFIYA by Robert Friedman is a disquieting book. In it, he chronicles the waves of arrival and expansion of the Russian mob in the US. The first wave came during the period of the Cold War, when the criminals arrived in the guise of Jewish dissident refugees, settling in Brighton Beach, New York. The second wave came after the dissolution of the USSR, when the new freedoms allowed by perestroika opened the floodgates to the Russian "wiseguys", some with previous connections to the KGB and military, now swarming into Miami, Denver and Los Angeles. Since then, the Red Mafiya has relentlessly extended its tentacles into, and sometimes completely around, such diverse activities and entities as the Russian government, Wall Street, the Russian and Swiss banking systems, the State of Israel, and the US National Hockey League. One of the Mafiya's most startling characteristics is the viciousness of its members. A viciousness forged into a steely hardness under Soviet totalitarianism, and which makes the dons of the Italian Mafia look like a bunch of kindly grandfathers. It causes one to look fondly back on the bad old days of the Cold War, when at least the Soviet security apparatus had its indigenous criminals under some measure of control, i.e. in some Arctic gulag where they could tear at each other's throats instead of ours.

I have mixed feelings about this book. First of all, it's not one I would've bought on my own - it was a gift. I mean, living in Southern California I `m well aware that there are loathsome elements "out there": mafias of whatever national origin, Latino gangs, Armenian gangs, Chinese gangs, Vietnamese gangs, South American drug cartels. Hell, maybe even brotherhoods of Eskimo assassins for all I know. The best I can do is stay out of their way, much as I avoid dog excrement on the sidewalk. There's not much I can personally do about them except support law enforcement agencies with my tax dollars, which, by the way, are legally extorted from me at 33% or more of my income. (I might well wonder which group is hurting me the most.) On the other hand, as the author points out, the damage that the Red Mafiya is doing to the Motherland may eventually cause a disgusted populace to elevate to leadership a Hitler-like figure - and he's going to have nukes to play with. This is a scary thought. On that basis, I have to applaud Friedman on the courage it took to write such a fine and informative piece of investigative journalism in the face of extreme personal danger. Honor is due.

This is a great book and a super-fast read. How unlucky for us readers that the author, Mr. Friedman died this summer. I was looking forward to more books.

I have been mesmerized since I started reading this book. It reveals a serious problem that transpasses the cliches of words like Mafiya, gangs, hoodlums, ...and the likes.
It reveals a termite problem that is chewing the beams of world order, existance and well being.
It should be a Must Read for every world leader, and politician.
I am surprized that it has not got wider exposure, and publicity. It should be translated into foreign languages the world over.