ABSTRACT
Russian organized crime has become the focus of attention for academics, international law enforcement agencies and the world media. The chapter explores two major approaches of the organised crime phenomenon: Russian organized crime as communism and as Mafia. It examines the history and development of organized crime in Russia from Tsarism to the end of Soviet socialism in 1991. A study of the history of Russian organized crime is in fact an appreciation of the changing nature of this interaction between legitimate and illegitimate. The study is presented within the framework of a model entitled the Chameleon Syndrome, so called because of the ability of organized crime, through its interaction with the legitimate structures, to merge with and eventually play a proactive role in the Russian state. The wave of anti-revolutionary banditism quoted from the Criminal Code of the Russian Socialist Federation of Soviet Republics (RSFSR), spread across discusses how Soviet Russia became a real threat to the Bolsheviks.
