Introduction

While journalists, academics, and contemporary crime novelists make frequent reference to the Russian mafia and Russia’s extensive corruption, there have been few serious attempts by citizens of Russia to look past the sensationalist headlines and examine what is really going on in Russia’s underworld. This book provides several carefully crafted analyses of the acute problems of corruption, organized crime, and terrorism in Russia. It examines the threat these problems present to Russian society and the Russian authorities’ great difficulties in responding to the challenges of extensive illegal migration, a significant drug trade, and the pervasive informal economy. The chapters here present a selection of work done by Russian scholars from diverse locales in Russia whose research was sponsored by the Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center (TraCCC) in Washington, DC.