Organized crime
It would take a separate book to analyze this myth, that is why we are just
going to point out the danger related to the image of organized crime as the new
“Masonic Order” or “octopus” dominating all spheres of public and state
life in Russia.
"The collapse of CPSU organizational structures brought the end to the
monolithic nature of state power and along with it, the end to the strict
hierarchy of possibilities for bureaucrats of various ranks to gain both legal
and illegal benefits. Some disbalance also between the political weight of a
position and its value in the initial process of property redistribution
occurred.
New possibilities and the temptation "to grab as much as possible",
as well as juridical confusion in regulating new economic relations could only
result in the growth and development of corruption and its acquiring new more
dangerous and sophisticated forms. Some go beyond the limits of
"usual" malfeasance in office and merge with criminal activity,
structuring and organizing it.
New businessmen, actually deprived of legal protection and with no respect
for the law, have become another source for organized crime. Many have retained
former connections with high-ranking patrons or have established new ones.
With such an approach, the fight against organized crime suggests above all a
reduction in the discretion of bureaucrats, the necessity of economic relations
and increasing the effectiveness of legal protection for all forms of property
etc.
If we consider that the core of the problem was with mysterious figures of
the criminal world, with various mafia and criminal groups, against which the
law is allegedly ineffective, then the demands to extend the power of repressive
bodies and making penalties harsher would be reasonable. The political essence
of the crime problem in our country and in our time follows from the above. Will
bureaucracy strengthen its power under the banner of fighting crime or will
society realize the real danger of state arbitrariness and direct its attempts
at developing public control over the activity of power structures and the
bureaucratic apparatus as a whole?
In general, the phenomenon called “organized crime” is very complicated
and poorly studied. Work by state criminologists is, primarily, aimed at
defining specific features of this type of crime, attaching negative moral
characteristics to groups and individuals relating to it, and searching for
means of getting rid of them. We would emphasize that being so rigorous and so
blood-thirsty is not actually scientific knowledge and is unlikely to help form
an adequate image of the subject under investigation.
We believe that in Russia phenomena regarded as organized crime are closely
connected with the role which the so-called “shadow structures”, that is a
complicated conglomerate of criminal (for example, thieves-in-law),
semi-legitimate and totally legitimate groups (the proportion of the criminal
part increased in the post-Soviet era) always played in Soviet society. These
structures were and still remain vitally important for the existence and
functioning of that social organ which is a result of society’s development
during the preceding 70 years. Filling legal, economic and social gaps, shadow
structures replace those mechanisms and institutions which make people’s lives
more bearable and the survival of society possible. Before suggesting any
prescriptions and solutions about how to combat criminal and the semi-legitimate
part of shadow structures, it is important, at least, to estimate their scale
(the extent of people’s involvement in these structures) and their actual role
in certain spheres of economic, social and political life in society. Otherwise,
it is impossible to predict the consequences if this foothold of shadow
structures is destroyed. To a great extent, organized criminal groups provide
(rather than impose) services not only for a corrupt army of 18-million state
servicemen but also satisfy the real needs of society and various social groups
(in a normal society this function is fulfilled by corresponding state
structures).
As it has already been pointed out, a huge part of the population is involved
in the sphere of criminal group activity, for these groups provide very
important economic and social objects which society cannot survive without. The
state as yet is unable to provide completely these objects. Hence, it is
impossible to liquidate organized crime with the help of repressive means just
as it was impossible to crush Chechen military formations with tanks. It turned
out that the majority of the Chechen population must be destroyed in order to do
so.
We do not believe in the slightest that the problem of reducing the spheres
of criminal group activity should be left unresolved. On the contrary, it should
be handled immediately since delay threatens society with degradation and the
state with catastrophe. But in the given situation repression cannot be the
only, exhaustive and sufficient means. Primarily, social and cultural methods
should be used; they would provide for the gradual inclusion of the most part of
shadow structures into the legitimate sphere.
* * *
In the USSR, agents were considered the most effective method of fighting
crime. According to expert estimates, 20,000 — 50,000 agents, informers
and provocateurs work for so called operative services in prisons and camps.
Though law enforcement bodies do sometimes solve serious crimes with the help of
their agents, such an enormous number of agents, firstly, results in an
inevitable growth in latent crime (in order to be part of the criminal world
agents have to commit crimes which are usually not registered or discovered)
and, secondly, they stimulate organized crime. Agents are often middlemen
between organized crime groups and law enforcement bodies. Recently, gangs
headed by operative workers, i.e. MVD officers, have been uncovered.
Couple years ago the French magazine Courier International (No. 7, October
1993) asked me to forecast what would occur in the criminal justice system in
Russia by 2015. This forecast I presented in the form of a review in
commemoration of the hundredth volume of the series “Criminal Russia. Prisons
and Camps”, which we began to publish in 1993. Whilst working on this textI
hoped that such a variant for the development of our society was not probable.
Unfortunately, subsequent events make this hope less and less founded...
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