Two Russian mobsters
The Russian Mafia, also known as the Red Mafia, the Redfellas, or the Bratva ("brotherhood", members of which are called bratki, or "bros") is a collective of various loosely-associated organized crime syndicates from the former Soviet Union, formed in the 1960s and 1970s. The Mafia originated in 1953, when 8,000,000 criminals were released from Stalinist labor camps after Joseph Stalin's death; many of these were members of the "thieves in law" in the prison system. Now that they were released into society, the criminals were no longer beholden to the laws of the "thieves in law", and they were free to work with the government. Under Leonid Brezhnev's government, crime bosses worked with corrupt CPSU party officials, and the criminals presided over a flourishing black market.
During the 1970s, the Russian government ignored the growth of private companies, allowing for the Russian mobsters to open legitimate businesses and prosper. Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost reforms loosened restrictions on small businesses, but the Russian Mafia had already begun to conduct its shakedowns in broad daylight, extorting businessmen. During the late 1980s, many members of the "Red Mafia" met at motel rooms and restaurants across Russia to divide Russia between multiple crime bosses, and they planned out how they could take advantage of the post-Soviet world. The Russian Mafia became known for its violence; 1,400 people were killed in Moscow alone in 1993. The poor economy of capitalist Russia would allow for the Russian Mafia to make lots of money, and as much as 40% of the economy of Russia was controlled by the Mafia. During the 1990s and 2000s, the Russian Mafia would become involved with the government, and some critics of Vladimir Putin's government would call it a "mafia state" due to the Mafia's far-reaching influence.
Vyacheslav Ivankov, better known as "Japonchik", became the godfather of Russian organized crime during the early 1990s after his release from prison, and he headed to America after his 1991 release. He sought to bring the "Redfellas" in the West under Russian control, seeking to organize all Russian criminals in North America. In March 1992, Ivankov arrived in New York City, heading to Brighton Beach in southern Brooklyn, a major Eastern European enclave. By the early 1990s, the Russian Mafia had become involved with gambling, narcotics trafficking, and prostitution in Brooklyn as an ally of the American Mafia. Ivankov was arrested, but the Red Mafia remained strong.
The Redfellas are known to be educated and creative; during the 1990s, Ludwig Fainberg was able to purchase six Cold War-era helicopters from the cash-starved Russian Army, and he was nearly able to purchase a nuclear submarine before the DEA busted him. The Russian Army's troops, who were paid under $150 a month under Boris Yeltsin's fragile economic system, were involved in arms deals with the Russian Mafia. Many Russian mobsters had bachelor's degrees and were engineers or doctors, and they were known to be very smart. The Russians were also involved with smuggling blue-dyed grain alcohol to Russia and the Ukraine, pretending that they were exporting industrial washing fluid; this allowed for them to avoid tariffs. The contraband alcohol was then purified, given some extra flavor, and sold as vodka in the former USSR. On the European black market, the Russian Mafia was able to make $500,000 for 6 containers. American businesses such as the McCormick Distilling Company assisted the Russian Mafia smugglers, leading to their indictment.
In modern times, there are as many as 6,000 Russian Mafia groups, with over 200 of them having a global reach. The Russian Mafia's influence is strong in Russia and the former USSR, and the Russian Mafia has a large presence in many countries across the world, including in Western Europe, the Balkans, Scandinavia, and North America in addition to the former Soviet republics. In 2009, it was estimated that the Russian Mafia operated in 50 countries and had up to 300,000 members worldwide.
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