StefanjaMafiya Coup is Successful
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1998/03/98/russian_mafia/76938.stm
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴(1/n)
Mikhail #Gorbachev's restrictions on #alcohol sales until 1987(2) seem to have paved the ground for #OrganizedCrime in #Russia, just like #Prohibition in the #US in the 1920's(1):
"Prohibition Profits Transformed the Mob"
"Prohibition practically created organized crime in #America. It provided members of small-time street gangs with the 👉greatest opportunity ever 👈— feeding the need of Americans coast to coast to drink beer,..."
(2/n)
"...hard liquor on the sly. Organized #racketeers dominated the illegal “#bootlegging” industry as well as the urban machine “#bosses” and the vice kings." (1)
The impact of the drug #alcohol by itself on post-#Soviet #Russian society is staggering:
"...estimated that the increase in #alcohol consumption since 1987, the year when then-Soviet leader Mikhail #Gorbachev's restrictions on alcohol sales collapsed, cost ..."
(2) https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/alcohol-blamed-half-90s-russian-deaths-flna1c9450713
(3/n)
"...the lives of 👉3 million #Russians 👈 who would otherwise be alive today."(2)
After that, #Boris #Yeltsin's economic #ShockTherapy, masterminded by economists Yegor #Gaidar and Anatoly #Chubais, it is my hypothesis that it not only "...created #Russian #oligarchs and paved the path for #Putin."(3)
It also made #kleptocracy the cornerstone of the post-#Soviet political system in #Russia.
It must have also provided a...
(4/n)
...boost to #OrganizedCrime in the #RussianFederation and its vassal states:
"A recent #Russian news report says the registered [!] #CrimeRate in the country has doubled in the past 10 years. Crime is so much a part of life in today's #Russia that the television channels carry special daily bulletins devoted to gangland #killings, #drug seizures and #robberies, perhaps...."
(5/n)
"...because the sheer volume of coverage would swamp the main news programmes, as #BBC Monitoring's Patrick #Jackson reports..." (4)
/END (for now)
(4)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/special_report/1998/03/98/russian_mafia/76938.stm
@HistoPol that would be an oversimplification, I believe. This report was coauthored with a knowledge Russian criminologist who was a visiting fellow in the US at the end of that decade. This was released June 2001. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/187085.pdf
Thanks for getting back to me, @StefLaw.
Impressive source. :) I will give it a look (might take a bit).
What exactly do you believe to be an oversimplification? That the Shock Therapy gave a boost to organized crime as well?--Because you referenced the page (2/n) which only deals with the impact of alcohol on Russian society and cites the (more current than 2001) statistics.