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Summer 2001: Organised Crime iIn Russia
Competition and Confusion of the Discourses on Organised Crime in Russia (PDF, 16 pages, 51.9 KB) , by Gilles Favarel-Garrigues
This article deals with the speeches on organised crime in Russia and with how they were given media coverage. It attempts to understand how this theme emerged as such in the soviet and later post-soviet context before being brought to the western world. The author specially put the accent on the conditions of emergence of a specialised knowledge from the 1980s onwards by analysing the logic and the supports of western representations. The author then highlights the interpenetrating between the so-called scientific knowledge, police, journalistic, and political discourses.
The English version of this contribution has been published in Alternatives Vol. 28, # 04, 2003. Available at http://www.rienner.com/altrec.htm
Protection and Violence in Russia at the End of the 1990's (PDF, 15 pages, 50.2 KB) , by Vadim Radaev
This article puts forward the main trends of the development of violence in Russian economical activities at the end of the 1990s. A special attention is brought on the threats and power being used in relationships between business partners. The author analyses the strategies used by Russian entrepreneurs in their relations to protection agencies. The study uses data gathered during two studies led in 1997-98 by the author and the Moscow Centre for the Study of Political Technologies. These two enquiries gathered 227 questionnaires answered by businessmen from 21 regions of the Russian Federation, as well as in depth interviews with 96 of them.
The English version of this contribution has been published in Alternatives Vol. 28, # 04, 2003. Available at http://www.rienner.com/altrec.htm
Organised Crime in Russia: the state of affairs in Saint- Petersburg (PDF, 24 pages, 65.3 KB) , by Iakov Gilinski & Iakov Kostioukovski
This contribution starts by stating the insufficiency of knowledge on Russian organised crime. The authors explore a scientific research experience: the studies led by the department of sociology of deviance and social control of the Russian Academy of Science. The objective of this article is to present the work and to describe the evolution of organised crime at the local level of St Petersburg.
A Monstrous Mirror Image: Crime Culture in Post-Soviet Russia (PDF, 17 pages, 54.1 KB) , by Anton Oleïnik
Every sociological analysis on organised crime is limited by the sources accessible to the researcher engaged in such a project. From this postulate the author suggests a detour by examining the links between "prison culture" – i.e. the norms and values structuring life in prison – and organised crime. This sociological analysis had recourse to information sources traditionally barely used by criminology: on the field enquiries and interviews in particular. Twenty-nine directed interviews were led between autumn 1996 and spring 1999, as well as questionnaires distributed to 541 detainees in 13 prisons situated in five regions of the Russian Federation. Moreover, in order to study the link between the prison world and the Russian criminal economy, 31 directed interviews were given to Russian businessmen. The contribution contains a large annex showing the singularity of this fieldwork.
Review Essay: Trapped by Madness? State power and transnational organised crime in the writings of Susan Strang (PDF, 18 pages, 55.8 KB) , by Richard H. Friman
A large number of protestations have occurred since the 1980s, and even more since the end of the Cold War, against the inability of the international community to deal with the development of mafias and denounce the risks for a destabilisation of the international political and economical order. Whether they were political or economical leaders, in charge of international organisations, members of the police, magistrates, journalists, researchers, academicians, they all pronounced similar discourses. They were indeed all convinced that the different organisations composing "global organised crime" shared common objectives and could therefore be considered as a unique actor, the "new evil empire" acting globally. H.R. Friman criticises the way Susan Strange relayed this diagnostic in two of her books and shows how such convictions are theoretically doubtful as they overestimate the dangers for the States and omit to question the social modes of construction of this new threat.
The English version of this contribution has been published in Alternatives Vol. 28, # 04, 2003. Available at http://www.rienner.com/altrec.htm