ABSTRACT
We have become a mafia state on a world scale. Everyone thinks that political issues could lead to an explosion but crime could as easily blow us asunder. (Boris Yeltsin cited in Handelman, 1995). Organized crime is destroying the economy, interfering in politics, undermining public morals, threatening individual citizens and the entire Russian nation . . . our country is already considered a great mafia
Russia as a Racket
power. (Boris Yeltsin cited in Sterling, 1994). Sterling and Handelman, the writers who quote Boris Yeltsin, warn continually
and clearly that the Russian “mafia” (the Italian term has been appropriated into the Russian language tout court) has so deeply penetrated government, business and state security forces that it has virtually transformed and reconstituted the entire post-perestroika society into a criminal formation. Yeltsin, the political maestro who, astride a tank not long ago, defied a communist putsch, now admits unabashedly - not in cautionary tones but as matter-of-fact that the state has been hijacked by hit men, racketeers and extortionists, that its corrupted politicians have brazenly amassed huge fortunes in bribes, and that military men have shamelessly peddled weapons - from Kalashnikovs to nuclear missiles - for the right price.
