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Comrade Criminal: Russia's New Mafiya Paperback – February 27, 1997

by Stephen Handelman (Author)

18

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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.

Print length

408 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Yale University Press
Publication date

February 27, 1997
Dimensions

9.21 x 6.11 x 1.06 inches
ISBN-10

027473625X
ISBN-13

978-0300063868
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Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

Gripping and lively, this is an account of Mafia machinations and the generally fruitless efforts of honest cops and outnumbered democratic politicians to thwart them.... One of the most comprehensive and convincing representations of what has happened in Russia since 1991.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0300063865
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press (February 27, 1997)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 408 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 027473625X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0300063868
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.26 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.21 x 6.11 x 1.06 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,988,375 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6,894 in Russian History (Books)
- #10,572 in Criminology (Books)
- #109,677 in Politics & Government (Books)

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Chares G. Muhle

A million and one.

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2016

Verified Purchase

When any community is oblivious to why even "group rules" need preventive and corrective maintenance
in a cave, village, tribe or nation, then greed, like oxygen, eats away at group machinery until everything
becomes rusted beyond recovery.

It's happened a million times. Comrade Criminal brilliantly bumps it to a million and one.

One person found this helpful

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E.P. Clark

Still Highly Relevant Today

Reviewed in the United States on 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.

3 people found this helpful

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Herman Colb

The book paints a shallow but grim portrait of Russia as “Democracy” took hold in the early 1990’d

Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2023

Verified Purchase

The Russia of today under the iron grip of Putin is so vastly different from the story told in the book that it is more like a historical sketch of a bygone era than any kind of report with current value. I would only recommend the book to those who are students of that initial era, when democracy was alleged to have taken over from communism.

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Daniel Harris

La Plus Ca Change ....

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2005

This is a very good book explaining the genesis of the Russian mafiya and its connections to big business and the government. As someone who has been involved with Russia for the last ten years, the most troubling aspect of this book is that I have seen very little to no change in the way things are done over there. For at least the last five years I have been convinced that Russia is decades away from having a true civil society and the sad thing is that my timeline for this occuring has not yet shortened. This book helps explain why.

6 people found this helpful

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Bryan

Communism to organized crime. Inevitable!

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2002

Handelman has done a wonderful job in showing the corruption of Communist society and how the greed and wish for prosperity inherent in humans all over the world has led to organized crime. It amazed me how connected to organized crime the Russian state was and still is. The sections on drugs, arms smuggling and nuclear weapons were very interesting. The book also shows how race based the crime gangs are, like they are in the United States and everywhere else. But Mr. Handelman, stop referring to them as "mafiya". Yeah, it sounds "Russian" or whatever, but it's annoying. Overall, I liked the book because it is very well researched and documented.

7 people found this helpful

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goING_96815

Absolutely worth reading

Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2004

The OC in Russia have a very different background than in the West, and the book Comrade Criminal explains how OC groups prospered and got influence during the transition process from Communism. These groups didn't just have access to the political infrastructure; they also got the know-how and inherited influence over businesses. If you're interested in OC or Russian politics/history this book is absolutely worth reading.

2 people found this helpful

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BP

How Russia was Criminalized

Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2002

Comrade Criminal not only lays out the power of the Russian mob, which has been done before, but also gives the reader the history of the mob's growth. And this isn't just over the last ten years or so, but pre-World War II. The author profiles the evolution of Russia's underworld and shows how the Communist era made it into what it is today. Definitely worth the read.

9 people found this helpful

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