Thieves in Law: Russian Mafia Part 2
Operation Barbarossa, Military Clique, USSR's Golden Age, "Shock Therapy", Soviet Collapse, and Gangster Oligarchs.
Thieves in Law: Russian Mafia Part 1 HERE
The End for Germany, Penal Battalions, & Bitch Wars
Operation Barbarossa—the German advance across the Soviet border—marked a decisive moment in the war. The Germans were doing exceptionally well, effectively conquering territory and cities; the Soviet state was increasingly desperate and forced to recede into its vast territory to take up defensive positions. Bullen (2016) says that despite the necessity for more men on the front, Stalin thought that the majority of the political prisoners could not be trusted to fight—siding with the Germans, as many Ukrainians did—instead offered amnesty only to the criminal inmates. This emergency decree would result in around 975,000 prisoners being released from the Gulags straight into the Red Army (Bullen, 2016). These inmates would not be placed among regular forces and instead in their own ghettoized penal battalions—Shtrafbat—mostly made up of criminals, runaways, dishonored officers, and anyone else deemed unworthy to serve in the regular forces (Bullen, 2016). These units were typically used as cannon fodder, mine sweepers, and all-around meat shields against the advancing Germans.
Now, this is where things get interesting for the Vory, many decided to fight for Stalin in an attempt at securing their freedom and abandoned their criminal brothers—those still locked away saw this as an act of cowardice, betrayal, and an alliance with the enemy state (Bullen, 2016). All defectors had abandoned their duty to the Thieves in Law—violating the “understandings” and were marked for death if ever seen again (Bullen, 2016). Unfortunately for the men who served in the Great War, those that survived now faced a post-WWII Russia in complete ruin. The German invasion had done tremendous damage and tens of millions of Russians were dead—the loss of key infrastructure and human capital, including major economic pressures led to material shortages, increased crime, and general chaos. These post-WWII conditions caused a boom in the prison populations—largely due to the increasingly harsh sentences for (state) theft—a sentence of up to 20 years of labor (Bullen, 2016). These conditions and new laws—an attempt to stymie mass state theft—eventually led to most of those criminals who fought in the Red Army and won their freedom to turn back to a life of crime and subsequently right back to the Gulags with the Vory waiting for them (Bullen, 2016).
Bullen (2016) identifies this as the start of the notorious “Bitch Wars”, which marked mass violence, including murder, stabbings, riots, and gang rapes (cell presses) between the Vory and the newly established “Military Clique” from 1946 to 1956. These hardened military men of the penal battalions, fresh from fighting on the eastern front and in the face of almost certain death or injury could not be easily intimidated or beaten like those political prisoners of the past. These military men would not bow to the rule of the Vory, and with the Vory becoming increasingly hated due to their many rules, extreme punishments, and wide use of rape began to lose recruits and loyalty to the Military Clique. Eventually, the guard’s sympathies grew with these ex-military men who fought in The Great War, which gave them tremendous privileges and power through trustee positions. Front and center among the Military Clique were the Ukrainian nationalists known as Banderas, who served alongside the SS; following the end of the war they made up a large portion of the Gulag population as POWs.
Logically, these men of the Military Clique also had many tattoos and a culture of their own that reflected their affiliation as a soldier in contrast to the Vory, this meant that tattoos became of even greater importance as a means to signal affiliation and identify potential enemies or allies. A decade of rioting, violence, murder, and rape finally coming to an end—the Military Clique along with many ex-Vory and political prisoners reigned supreme. With the end of the “Bitch Wars”, the fall from status of the Vory, the submission to state authorities, the breaking of the “thief code”, and the loss of control over the zone—officially marked the Vory’s decline. Despite their loss of power within the Gulags and labor camps—the Vory would survive as a fledgling force—much of the culture, and specifically, their style of coded tattooing living on.
Bullen writes in the section From Stalin to Brezhnev:
By the 1970s the traditional Vory-v-Zakone was a thing of the past and seen as a throwback to the Stalinist era. Some academic estimates put the number of active Thieves in Law at this time in the low hundreds.1
Post-Stalin Russia, Hibernating Vory, and the Israel Lobby
Stalin’s death in 1953 ushered in a new era of the Gulag; prisoner numbers in the zone declined, and what later emerged can only be described as the glory days of the USSR. Under the leadership of Khrushchev and Brezhnev came the Soviet primacy of space exploration, an emerging nuclear powerhouse, Olympic dominance, a beacon of hope for Socialists everywhere, and all-around superb conditions—the Cold War hanging overhead notwithstanding. It is these years, even now, that many older Russians look back fondly on, particularly in the wake of the Soviet collapse of the late 80s and the hellish conditions of the 1990s (Bullen, 2016). It is a general truism that when times are good, and states are functional the impetus for crime and therefore criminals are not as likely, the selection pressures on a population are stable and the criminal underclass is manageable. It is, as we will see, during those eras of state incompetence, political instability, abusive laws, and material famine that dictate a significant rise in criminality, prison populations, illicit capital, and organized crime.
Eventually, the incompetence and inefficiencies of a centralized economy, price-fixing, ideological dogma, and quotas—including the continued arms race with the United States began to take their toll on the USSR. Mass corruption and theft of state property became a regular occurrence, supported by an increasingly profitable black market, providing not only western goods but those goods which were in high demand and low in supply due to the incompetent production quota system (Bullen, 2016). Much of the emerging black market in Brezhnev’s USSR was controlled by criminal organizations from Georgia, Chechnya, and Armenia (Bullen, 2016). These outer countries—especially in the Caucasus—presented an opportunity to put distance between the center of the Soviet Empire and their criminal activity, it is also the case that these countries have a culture of corruption, ethnic gangsterism, and poor material conditions perfect for organized crime. This had been the break the Thieves in Law needed since their rapid decline during the 1950s, an opportunity to take advantage of the rampant corruption, criminality, and incoherence of the Soviet Empire.
Bullen (2016) identifies a steady decline in conditions in the USSR towards the latter years of Brezhnev’s rule and his popularity withered as a result. In an attempt to stymie collapse he decided to implement a “Diploma Tax” to reduce the emigration of those Russians who are highly educated and wealthy from moving to western nations that possessed more economic opportunity. He goes on to say that this tax would require any citizen permanently leaving the USSR to repay the cost of their free University education—12,000 rubles—a hefty sum at the time. The tax would apply to only a small portion of total emigrants, but it would cause an uproar among a powerful minority, particularly the ethnic Jewish population. Many among the Jewish-Russian population were looking to emigrate as the USSR began to deteriorate, most of whom were highly educated and wealthier business owners seeking to flee to Israel or the United States—officially abandoning the communist revolution they so heavily supported and financed under Lenin.
Interestingly in 1972, President Nixon signed a trade agreement with the USSR as a way to de-escalate the situation between the two great powers and to improve economic conditions in the USSR (Bullen, 2016).
Bullen writes in the section From Stalin to Brezhnev:
In 1973 Nixon hosted Leonid Brezhnev in the United States and a new era of US-Soviet relations seemed to be on the horizon. However, Democratic Congressmen, under pressure from the powerful American-Jewish lobby, sensed a weakness in the Nixon administration’s foreign policy and enacted the Jackson-Vanik amendment a year later in 1973, against the wishes of both Nixon and Henry Kissinger.
The Jackson-Vanik amendment denied “most favored trading nation status” to non-free market economy countries if the US deemed they unlawfully restricted human rights, in particular the right to emigrate. The resulting punishment would be higher tariffs imposed on selected goods and services or even a total ban on involvement in specific economic sectors.
This amendment would ultimately stand despite the USSR capitulating and allowing tens of thousands of Soviet Jews to emigrate on the promise that it would be scrapped—eventually, 500,000 Jews left for the USA, and around 1,000,000 Jews went to Israel (Bullen, 2016). The well-to-do Soviet Jews having successfully fled the sinking ship, managed to destroy any other relationship between the USA and Russia with the help of Israel-first Democratic congressmen, while also successfully furthering the handicapping of the USSR’s economy and mass brain drain of the Soviet state.
Coming to America: The Russian Mafia
This is not merely a fascinating section on the dynamics between the USSR, USA, Soviet Jews, and the Israel lobby, but it also marks the official introduction of the Russian Mafia into the United States during this period. Bullen (2016) identifies the mass exodus of Soviet Jews to the USA—a result of the aforementioned amendment—bringing many of the upper echelons of the recently revived Thieves in Law to the USA, resulting in the expansion of the criminal enterprise overseas. These ethnically Jewish-Russian Vory settled in New York, primarily in the famous Brighton Beach, and Brooklyn borough—Little Odessa (Bullen, 2016). The Soviet-Jewish Vory were able to settle in an already Jewish-dominated area with many connections and a compliant population incapable of ratting. These Vory brought with them all manner of organized crime including illegal gambling, scams, prostitution, stolen jewels, and drugs—begrudgingly playing second-fiddle to the Italian mafia that dominated the North East USA (Bullen, 2016).
Bullen (2016) says that in 1992, the top-ranking mob bosses in Moscow sent Vyacheslav Ivankov—Georgian-Russian—to take over operations in America, it is through him and the ongoing collapse of the Soviet Union that marked a new golden age for the Thieves in Law, with Vyacheslav, eventually being named Vor-V-Zakone (Mob Boss); his star tattoo on each clavicle marking his official rank and denotes his status. It is interesting to note, that despite being called the Russian Mafia, in the later years of the Soviet Union, most members would be Georgians or Jews, rather than ethnic Russians—primarily due to their superior clannish organization and willingness to work with corrupt officials and authorities.
Bullen (2016) in section The New Russians 1985-1999:
Gorbachev intended to bring the country into the modern age and create a new form of socialism, one with limited amounts of free trade and which allowed small businesses to operate openly. His policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) were intended to stimulate the economy, end the black market and improve living standards for all. Instead, he created economic and social chaos with the main beneficiary certainly not being the Soviet people.
Gorbachev’s reforms and the attempted modernizing of the USSR out of concern for immoral and drunken behavior led to the implementation of a previously tried American policy: the prohibition of alcohol. Famously, prohibition did not work well in the USA, with the illegal sale of alcohol snowballing into a massive black market and the funding of a criminal underworld that resulted in extreme gang violence. It is men like Al Capone—progenitors of the American Italian mafia—in places like Chicago who saw great opportunity in prohibition, eventually establishing great fame and wealth. This is precisely what happened in a “dry” Russia, the demand for alcohol did not collapse overnight but was instead taken over by the Russian Mafia already waiting in the wings (Bullen, 2016). The sale of alcohol not only maintained its levels before prohibition, but it also surpassed them, notwithstanding the enormous financial loss in revenue for the state—which they desperately needed—transferred directly to the hands of organized crime (Bullen, 2016).
“The Soviet shadow economy”, which it became known, grew to epic proportions in Gorbachev’s Russia: a failing government with shrinking revenue, heavy expenditures, massive economic stagnation, and corruption contributed greatly to the success of the criminal underworld who absorbed much of the would-be profits. The mass theft of state property with increasing cooperation from both workers and authorities taking advantage of the collapsing state, served to quicken the famous collapse of the Soviet Union, while also enriching the Russian Mafia and many businessmen—later called oligarchs—who would capitalize on the unfolding events (Bullen, 2016).
Bullen (2016) in section The impact of Gorbachev’s reforms:
An enormous amount of meat, vegetables, fruit, and other farm products were also stolen in transit, this would be marked down as damaged during transportation with the assistance of middle managers, and the produce would then be diverted to the black market. All of this economic activity was of course controlled by the professional criminal class, the golden age for the Vory-v-zakone had begun.
Between the years 1980 to 1990 officially recorded crimes rose by 78.8% from 1,028,284 to 1,839,451 annually. 1989 was the worst year, seeing an annual increase of 32%. The CIA estimated that crime relating to the shadow economy grew by up to 75% within just twelve months in 1988-89.
The Death of the USSR
By 1992, the Soviet Union along with the Communist party was dead. The crime rate was at an all-time high, disorder and chaos were commonplace, and the Russian Mafia was basking in its newfound fiefdom. The formerly underground black market and the underworld of the Russian Mafia could now be taken public, and the corruption, murder, and gang activity could be overt. The collapsing government could not pay its politicians, its police, and even its basic services were collapsing—this is where the Russian Mafia came in, a bit of organization in chaos and they took control (Bullen, 2016). Now government officials, citizens, and police were receiving their paycheck from the Vory, and not the State. The Russian Mafia had free rein over Russia as well as its many fledgling assets that it could buy and sell in foreign markets for astronomical returns. Oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky (Jewish-Russian) could go from mathematicians to leadership positions at the head of the newly crafted gangster state (Bullen, 2016). The mob effectively ruled what was left of the USSR’s empire, economy, and assets in a rapidly privatizing economy with ruthless gangsterism and clever businessmen.
Bullen (2016) in section The impact of Gorbachev’s reforms:
Men like Berezovsky and other mafia bosses-turned oligarchs took control of the Russian economy through many complex business deals and through exploiting the American and IMF-enforced economic reforms known as “shock therapy”.
Developed by Harvard professor Jeffery Saches and with the full support of Washington and the international finance community, they promised Russia billions of dollars in aid and other financial and political support if they would immediately liberalize the economy and end the communist era of price control, state subsidies and other socialist policies.
It is now a matter of history, that Yeltsin accepted the terms with little choice, and removed state price controls on consumer goods. Predictably, inflation soared, the budget collapsed, and the Russian government was instructed not to take on any more debt—without revenue or external capital, as well as mass inflation, the Russian economy was thoroughly fucked (Bullen, 2016). The jobs died out, the money to pay workers ended, the businesses and factories closed, and everything that the state had once owned began being bought up at astronomically low prices—typically through the Russian Mafia. The USA and international finance were able to capitalize on the dying ex-Soviet empire and usher it off of a cliff to loot it for all it was worth at pennies on the dollar.
The backroom deals and corruption, the death throes of a dying empire, and an economy built on glass had finally shattered; the gangsters of old became the Oligarchs of now, and the Russian Mafia entered worldwide renown. The illegitimate business of the underworld was made legitimate almost overnight through the clever use of international finance and leveraging the newly emerging “free market economy” against the collapsing centralized economy of old—turning illicit money into hard legal capital. It is the meteoric rise from the Gulags of Siberia to the golden age of the Vory-V-Zakone—managing an international crime syndicate and functionally running the collapsing Russian Empire that makes the Thieves in Law so fascinating. It is these events that cemented the Russian Mafia in almost every major country on earth, including maintaining considerable wealth, power, and prestige in Russia even today.
Bullen, M. (2016). Thief in law: A guide to Russian prison tattoos and Russian-speaking organized crime. Schiffer Publishing.
Baldeav, D., Vasiliev, S., Plut︠s︡er-Sarno A., Luard, H., & Bromfield, A. (2003). Russian criminal tattoo encyclopedia. Steidl/Fuel.
Such groups can be influential and powerful, especially in a power vacuum created by an incompetent government. I certainly have no idea why it is relevant, but the ethical and political doctrines of Templism, a creed proclaimed by the gods, may be interesting to you.