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Gangs of Russia: From the Streets to the Corridors of Power PDF

288 Pages·2015·1.012 MB·English
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GANGS OF RUSSIA GANGS OF RUSSIA From the Streets to the Corridors of Power Svetlana Stephenson CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS I THACA AND LONDON Copyright © 2015 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2015 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2015 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stephenson, Svetlana, 1962– author. Gangs of Russia : from the streets to the corridors of power / Svetlana Stephenson. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-5387-8 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-5017-0024-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Gangs—Russia (Federation) 2. Organized crime—Russia (Federation) 3. Political corruption—Russia (Federation) 4. Russia (Federation)—Social conditions—1991– I. Title. HV6439.R8S74 2015 364.106′60947—dc23 2015003676 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cover image: Young men at a city festival in Nizhny Novgorod, c. 2005. Photo by Alik Yakubovich. For Bob and Alexei Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: In the Shadow of the State 1 1. Street Organizations and Gangs in Russia 16 2. The Transformation of Gangs in the 1990s 44 3. The Business of Bandit Gangs: From Predation to Assimilation 65 4. Gang Organization 92 5. Street Trajectories 127 6. The Gang in the Community 151 7. Life according to the Poniatiia: The Gang’s Code 170 8. Navigating the World of Violence 189 9. Gang Culture and the Wider Russian Society 223 Conclusion: Out of the Shadows? 235 Appendix: Development of Tatarstan Gangs, Three Examples 239 Key to Interviewees 243 Methodological Note 245 Glossary 247 References 251 Index 269 vii Acknowledgments T here are many people whose support and friendship helped me to write this book. First and foremost I am grateful to the late Alexander Salagaev—whose energy, professionalism, erudition, and good humor made him a joy to work with—and his colleagues, Alexander Shashkin and Rustem Safin, who generously shared their expertise and knowledge at all stages of the study and organized the fieldwork in Kazan. I am also very grateful to Rustem Maksudov, who greatly helped with the fieldwork in Moscow and whose own experience of researching Kazan gangs at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s significantly enriched this book. The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation provided the critical research funding, and I am very grateful to them for their support. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to all the research participants who were willing to share sensitive details about their lives and who, to protect their confidentiality, must stay anonymous. Many friends and colleagues generously provided advice, support, and encour- agement along the way. Special thanks go to Dave Brotherton, Dmitrii Gromov, Irina Kuznetsova-Morenko, John Lea, Alexei Levinson, Vincenzo Ruggiero, Dan- iel Silverstone, and Kevin Stenson. My dear friends Simon Hallsworth, Andrew Travers, and Elena Danilova read the manuscript and contributed thoughts and ideas throughout our ongoing conversations about Russia, its gangs, and the rest of the world’s burning issues. I would like to make a special mention of the University of Helsinki and the Aleksanteri Institute that provided me with the opportunity to spend a very fruit- ful two months in Helsinki as a visiting research fellow in 2013. I am also grateful to my colleagues at the University of Virginia, and especially Kate Makarova and Robert Geraci, for inviting me to present a paper at their workshop series and for their constructive comments on my work. My gratitude also goes to my col- leagues at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at London Metropolitan University for all their support. My sincere thanks also go to Roger Haydon, Ange Romeo-Hall, Katy Meigs, and their colleagues at Cornell University Press for all their encouragement, sup- port, hard work, professionalism, and patience, and to their anonymous review- ers for their constructive and insightful comments. Some of the ideas in chapters 1 and 8 were initially developed in my article “The Violent Practices of Youth Territorial Groups in Moscow,” Europe-Asia ix

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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.