Customer Reviews

Russian Mafia In America: Immigration, Culture, and Crime

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As an assistant professor in Criminal Justice I am constantly searching for new material on organized crime. I used this book for a graduate course on the topic in Spring 05 and neither I nor the students were very impressed. There are three basic issues to be raised:
1. On ethnicity: On the first page of text the author states: "For all Russians, being especially adaptive and innovative often meant putting aside morality and legality, and this outlook-- characterized by rationalization, hypocrisy, and a double standard of morality-- to varying degrees shapes the thinking and behavior of almost all Soviet Russians who have come to America." A Russian immigrant friend of mine read this passage and said, "I agree completely." After some further thought he then said, "But doesn't this describe Americans as well?" The thought that criminal motivation is based on ethnicity is a throwback to organized crime theories up through the 1960s and 1970s. Social science recognizes that types of crimes may be related to ethnicity through experience and opportunity, but the rationalizations, hypocrisies, and double moral standards of organized criminals are human, rather than Russian American, traits.
2. There is a definite over dependence on governmental data sources. While government sources are useful, those of use in the field recognize the need to balance this information with other source types.
3. The conclusion is that there is no Russian Mafia in America. Summed up by one of my students: "Maybe the shape of mafia as an organized crime type has changed." The strict definition of "mafia" used in the book excludes almost every type of criminal organization found in the world today. More time should be spent on predicting future patterns or perhaps explaining how and why the "mafia" model is no longer applicable to organized crime in general. Part of this stems from too much reliance on government data which still organizes organized crime according to a mafia template.
One important good note: The discussion on how media distorts perceptions of organized crime is well written and, for the most part, well researched.
I think a book like this had to be written as part of the evolution of understanind on Russian-American organized crime. I say this in the hope that better things will eventually come about.

I found this quite well-researched book too clinical for a juicy subject of the organized crime. More than anything it is a consolidation of previous works of journalists and investigators presented in a tone of a laboratory study. Few interesting historical backgrounds in each chapter are outweighed by bland data analysis that seems endless, and in this respect the book, in my opinion, is of low literary value to the general public. Spare yourself time and money and look for authors who interview the subjects firsthand, such as C. Freeland, P Klebnikov, R. Freedman, etc.

Anything that exposes criminal elements in our society is worth reading and analyzing. The Russian Mafia, however, with its' fierce reputation throughout the world and dabblings in everything from prostitution, gambling, stolen merchandise, and even rumored nuclear technology, is not to be feared. This book exposes the Russian Mafia in America and how they are controlling whatever they touch and goes into great detail in examining the illegal immigration and citizenship schemes,
overseen, yes, by the Russian Mafia. Personally, I believe the Russian Mafia has weaknesses in organization, structure, and even leadership which will eventually weaken these Siberian slugs to a hard downfall. Further, from reading this book, I think the Russkies are enjoying capitalism just a little too much.

Given the information now pouring out of Russia, including Vladimir Putin's attempts to handle kleptocrats in his country, and the existence of deep and broad interconnections and money transfers with their U.S. counterparts (think e.g. global prostitution), the assertions made in this work seem surreal. The dense and pedantic narrative seems almost to be designed to hide the fact that the content offers no insight into the topic.

Read Red Mafiya. It is more anecdotal, but the brave (late) Robert Friedman clearly got up from his desk to do some fact-finding.