Mark Galeotti: The Vory: Russia's Super Mafia

The first serious history of Russia's most feared crime class: the vory v zakone. In 1974, a body washed up on a Russian coastline. The face was disfigured and there were no fingerprints or clothes by which to identify it. Yet within two days the police knew who it was. The reason: the body was covered with tattoos, the signature mark of a vor, a member of Russia's fraternity of gangsters. The vory were born early in the twentieth century, largely in the Gulags and criminal camps. Members abided by the thieves' code, a strict system that forbade all paid employment and cooperation with law enforcement and the state. Their tattoos signalled their commitment to the criminal life, and were also their DV. In this hard-hitting yet nuanced account, Russian organised crime expert Mark Galeotti explores the history of the Russian underworld and the vory at its heart - a group that has survived and thrived amid the changes brought on by Stalinism, the Cold War, the Afghan War and the end of the Soviet experiment. Ranging from the vory's roots in tsarist Russia to the new criminal class that now flourishes under Putin, Galeotti shows how organised crime has penetrated the country's financial and political structures and presents a formidable challenge which cannot be ignored. -- From dust jacket.