Alexey Feldt, Associate Professor

Pomor State University (Arkhangelsk)

Problems of Russian criminality in the U.S. described in the book "Red Mafiya. How the Russian mob has invaded America" by Robert Friedman

The role and influence of Russian emigration on American life are important. Among them, who left Russia, and realized themselves in the United States were famous scientists, writers, musicians, engineers and people of another occupations. Certainly their contribution to development of the American society can appreciate positive. But among hundreds of thousands émigrés from Russia were people whose criminal activity in Russia served a main reason of their immigration. Last ten years conversations about Russian criminal community in the U.S. becomes very actual. We can see many articles in the magazines and newspapers, special programs on TV about it in the United States as well as in Russia. The book is entitled "Red Mafiya. How the Russian mob has invaded America" (Little, Brown and Co., Boston; New York, London, 2000) by journalist Robert Friedman has become a good example of interest to this problem.

Robert Friedman began exploring the shadowy world of Russian organized crime in the late 1980s. During the 1990s he began gathering the materials about it using information from FBI and CIA, interviewing himself some of the leaders of Russian criminal world in the U.S. His work was hard and dangerous. Friedman knew that the Russian mob would leave journalists alone as long they didn't come between the mobsters and their money. He had apparently crossed this dangerous line in a series of revelatory articles about the growing threat of the Russian mob in such publications as New York, Details, and Vanity Fair, and especially in this book.

Friedman writes that the first wave of Russian mobsters used the period of détente. During the détente days of the early 1970s, when Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had agreed to allow the limited emigration of Soviet Jews, thousands of hard-core criminals, many of them released from Soviet Gulags by KGB, took advantage of their nominal Jewish status to swarm into the United States. The majority settled in Brighton Beach, where they quickly resumed their cruel criminal vocation. For example, in two-year period between 1972 and 1973 alone, more than 66,000 Russian Jews emigrated, compare to just 2,808 in 1969.

The book gives us good answers on some questions about Russian mobsters in the U.S. now. Who are they? What are their names? What have they done?

Who are they?

After the acquaintance with many criminal persons on the pages of Friedman's book we can see that 'they are really not Russians. Some of them are Jewish, people from Caucasus; some of them lived in Ukraine, or Byelorussia, or other places of former Soviet Union before their emigration. They represented different ethnic groups but as regards Americans the named them only one word Russians. We can understand it because emigrants from U.S.S.R. first of all were representatives of Soviet and Russian culture.

Friedman gives us good example. One of the famous criminal persons Monya Elson said: "I was thinking, what kind of Jew am I? I don't know any Jewish holidays - I never heard of them. But I sang Russians songs, I ate Russian food. I spoke Russian language. I sucked inside Russian culture".

So those, whom author names Russians really are people of different ethnic or language groups but they are united by former Soviet Union and modern Russia. The political regime of the U.S.S.R. led to the unification conscience and models of behavior. This fact that explains their similarities and common differences from other groups of population in the United States makes Russians. So, paradoxically Jew Monya Elson is Russian.

What are their names?

It is no doubt that Monya Elson, Vyacheslav Ivankov, Boris Nayfeld, Evsei Agron, whose criminal deals are devoted to many pages of Friedman's book were a part of Russian Mafiya. But also we can meet the names of very famous persons in modern Russia. Among them hockey players, singers, politics and etc. Friedman speaks about them very easy using, for example, CIA or FBI reports. It makes the book interesting and very attractive. It is kind of journalists work, journalists investigation. But it is impossible to repeat their names in this article because it were not official accusations or courts.

What have they done?

There were different kinds of crimes: drags transportation, sale of weapons, gambling, money laundering and others. But why does American author pay attention to Russian Mafiya?

Friedman consists a process of development Russian Mafiya in the United States as well as in the world very dangerous. In the North America alone, Friedman writes, there are now thirty Russian crime syndicates operating in at least seventeen U.S. cities, most notably New York, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Denver. The Russians have already pulled off the largest jewelry heist and insurance and Medicare frauds in American history, with a net haul exceeding $1 billion. They have invaded North America's financial market, orchestrating complex stock scams, allegedly laundering billions of dollars though the Bank of New York, and coolly infiltrating the business and real estate worlds. The Russian mob has even League, where many players have either been its victims or become Mafiya facilitators, helping the mob sink its roots further into America soil. There is even fear that NHL games may be fixed. "The Russians didn't come here to enjoy the American dream", New York State tax agent Roger Berger says. "They came here to steal it".

Russian mobsters in the United States aren't just Italian wiseguy wannabes. Merging with the even more powerful Mafiya groups that have flourished in post-perestroika Russia, they have something La Cosa Nostra can only dream about: their own country. It is true! The process of criminalization and corruption in Russia now is a good soil for a growth these problems in another countries.

The book doesn't contain statistic material about how many people from Russian émigrés and visitors have involved in criminal activity in the U.S. But the facts of growth this problem must trouble us. The process of globalization makes criminal world global too. And when United States struggle against Russian criminality it is not, certainly, a struggle against Russia or Russians. Common efforts against criminal groups and leaders in the U.S. and Russia work on the development of Russian-American relations and positive image of Russian émigrés and Russian in the world on whole.