29 January 2009

Russian/Mafiya History

BRIEF RUSSIAN HISTORY
1861-1905
  • Czar Nicholas II created a parliamentary system in 1905 which would decrease the number of strikes and violent outbursts generating from peasants
  • This representative assembly (called a duma) was convened a total of 4 times during WWI and gave legitimacy to other political factions within the empire and would hopefully increase civil rights

1917-1924
  • Russia aided France against Germany in WWI
  • Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Nikolai Lenin), overthrew the provisional government (that took over czars) and implemented Karl Marx’s theory of communism
  • Czar family captured and executed
  • Military leaders: Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin
  • Lenin died as his policies began to work

1925-1953
  • Stalin took control and put Trotsky and other opposing council members to exile; he now had full control without any intervention from other liberal or moderate parties. He decided to concentrate on improving military strength and building on improving the Soviet economy, rather than follow Lenin’s revolutionary goal of dominating the world.
  • Stalin died in 1953

1953-1964
  • Nikita Khrushchev – improving foreign relations, outer space developments and housing/employment for Soviet economy
  • Political bureau (Politburo) took out Khrushchev for “extreme radical policies”

1964-1982
  • Brezhnev in power till death in ’82; he left behind one of the strongest military sectors but weakest population morale with crumbling financial, social and political sectors

THE RED MAFIA
+ Russian mob (Russkaya Mafiya; Red Mafia; Krasnaya Mafiya; or Bratva (Brotherhood)) – appears after 1991?
+ Georgian, Ukrainian, Armenian, Shechens, and Azeri, Belaruse
+ The Organizatsiya

ca. 1991
  • 100000 member owing allegiance to 8000 stratified crime groups
  • Bosses and main members believed to be X-Soviet Army and X-KGB officers
  • Has existed in imperial and communist eras as a form of open rebellion
  • Honour-based
  • 1992-1994: targeted the community centres of power and seized control of nation’s banking system
  • “Thieves in Law” (Вор в законк (vory v zakone)): skilled worker (particularly a thief) within the Russian Criminal World who satisfies certain requirements of the Russian criminal tradition…
  • arose in prison camps – extensive tattooing; code of thieves honour and tradition – leaders = vory (вор)
  • Attempts to expand into US by means of trafficking drugs and weapons
  • Rivalry/wars with Cosa Nostra and Yakooza
  • Links to Colombian drug smugglers? And smaller gangs; smuggling illegal workers west to the European Union and Britain?
  • Home in the US = Brighton Beach (Little Odessa) in NY
Tattoos:
  • Rose on Chest: grins on those who fail to pay debts in card games
  • Spade: suite of thieves
  • Clubs: “criminal” suite
  • Diamonds: stoolpigeons and informers
  • Hearts: homosexual/sex object in prison
  • Argot: secret vocabulary/idioms

KGB:
  • KGB: Committee for State Security (sword & shield) 1954-1991 (1917 Cheka); Комитет Государтвенной Безопасности (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti)
  • Similar to CIA, FBI, Secret Service ~ SS –assassins
  • Disbanded by Yeltsin in 1995
  • External and counter-espionage; liquidation of anti-Soviet and counter-revolutionary organisation within the USSR; guarding national borders; guarding the Communist Part and State leaders, critical State property; investigate and prosecute thieves of State and Socialist Party and white-collar criminals

recorded at 02:17
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