The most thorough and comprehensive assessment published to date of
the extent and seriousness of criminal activity in Russia.
Handelman, Moscow bureau chief for the Toronto Star from 1987 to
1992, provides an unprecedented degree of detail to document
prevailing charges of the pervasiveness of organized crime, which
allegedly accounted for 30 to 40 percent of national turnover in
goods and services in 1993, according to Russian law enforcement
agencies. Handelman rightly points out the difficulty of arriving
at an agreed definition in a country where high taxes and red tape
make it hard for business to be conducted honestly. But among the
useful points he makes are that smuggling and the black market had
become vital to the functioning of the state in the last 20 years
of the Soviet Union's existence - which gives, as he says, new
meaning to the phrase "evil empire." The KGB and government
officials have commandeered the whole process of privatization. And
despite repeated declarations of war on crime, the government has
failed to deal with the phenomenon. (Some statistics are ambiguous,
however. Numbers showing how widespread corruption is - in 1993,
46,000 officials from all levels of government were tried on
charges of corruption or abuse of power - could also prove the
diligence and incorruptibility of those bringing the charges).
Finally, according to Handelman, this wave of criminality has led
not only to a disenchantment with capitalism, but to "an
overwhelming sense of defeat." While Handelman disclaims pessimism
and pays tribute to the ingenuity and grit of many Russians, his
last chapter, titled "Who Lost Russia?," is not reassuring.
Somewhat journalistic in style, but a careful and serious-minded
effort to understand the significance of a pervasive criminality
that threatens the structure of the state. (Kirkus Reviews)
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.
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