ABSTRACT
The failed coup of August 1991 saw the final collapse of the Soviet structures of power, an ironic end to the ambitious reforms of perestroika and democratisation which had aimed at strengthening the very system they ultimately helped to destroy. The subsequent euphoria on the part of the reformers and their ideological allies, the Western capitalist states, translated into the assumption that Russia now would be able to complete the transition to a full market economy and adopt Western-style liberal democratic style of governance. Few were naïve enough to believe that the transition would be easy. But even fewer could appreciate the extent to which negative social phenomena, particularly organised crime, would flourish under the new conditions and, as they had done under Gorbachev, threaten the development of Yeltsin’s ‘new Russia’. Less than two years after the coup, crime, and particularly organised crime, was acknowledged as ‘problem number one’ in Russia (Pravda, 13 February 1993). Organised crime, or the ‘mafiya’ as it became known,1 had infiltrated every sector of the economy, threatened significantly to undermine the move towards political democracy and had such an impact on social consciousness that it became one of the key issues upon which political parties based their programmes and manifestos.2
