A concise, scholarly look at the rise of crime in post-Soviet Russia.
An Oxford criminologist profiles a small group of perpetrators and their outsize role in modern Russia.
In this concise volume, Varese, who studies organized crime, examines the nature of unlawful activity in Russia from the 1980s to the present. First is Vyacheslav Ivan’kov, a mobster who became the “most feared” representative of the vory v zakone, or “thieves in law,” a sect of “professional criminals who follow a code of honour.” Next is Boris Berezovsky, a powerful businessman who was “instrumental in ensuring Putin’s election” in 2000, then made a white-collar fugitive when Putin turned against the oligarchs who aided his rise to power. Sergei Savely’ev, the subject of the book’s third section, is distinguished not by his crime (drug trafficking) but by his actions during his incarceration, when he leaked videos of prison torture and rape to a human rights group, proving that the state had “condoned and indeed encouraged the mass rape of convicts.” The final section of the book deals with Nikita Kuzmin, the young inventor of the “world’s most powerful computer virus, Gozi.” While Varese does provide the occasional colorful detail (noting, for example, that 26-year-old Kuzmin longed to purchase a Playboy Russiaphotoshoot for his then girlfriend), the book is less interested in its subjects as individuals than as emblems of larger issues in the “macro history of Russia.” Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in the 1980s, Varese argues, failed to equip the new economy with protections for fair exchanges, thus informal enforcers like Ivan’kov emerged. In the case of cybercrime, the state is increasingly forced to turned to “freelance criminals” to carry out their operations. This is an intellectually rigorous book, compellingly argued and crisply written.
A concise, scholarly look at the rise of crime in post-Soviet Russia.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781509563609
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Polity
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.
“The Mongols swept across the globe as conquerors,” writes the appreciative pop anthropologist-historian Weatherford (The History of Money, 1997, etc.), “but also as civilization’s unrivaled cultural carriers.”
No business-secrets fluffery here, though Weatherford does credit Genghis Khan and company for seeking “not merely to conquer the world but to impose a global order based on free trade, a single international law, and a universal alphabet with which to write all the languages of the world.” Not that the world was necessarily appreciative: the Mongols were renowned for, well, intemperance in war and peace, even if Weatherford does go rather lightly on the atrocities-and-butchery front. Instead, he accentuates the positive changes the Mongols, led by a visionary Genghis Khan, brought to the vast territories they conquered, if ever so briefly: the use of carpets, noodles, tea, playing cards, lemons, carrots, fabrics, and even a few words, including the cheer hurray. (Oh, yes, and flame throwers, too.) Why, then, has history remembered Genghis and his comrades so ungenerously? Whereas Geoffrey Chaucer considered him “so excellent a lord in all things,” Genghis is a byword for all that is savage and terrible; the word “Mongol” figures, thanks to the pseudoscientific racism of the 19th century, as the root of “mongoloid,” a condition attributed to genetic throwbacks to seed sown by Mongol invaders during their decades of ravaging Europe. (Bad science, that, but Dr. Down’s son himself argued that imbeciles “derived from an earlier form of the Mongol stock and should be considered more ‘pre-human, rather than human.’ ”) Weatherford’s lively analysis restores the Mongols’ reputation, and it takes some wonderful learned detours—into, for instance, the history of the so-called Secret History of the Mongols, which the Nazis raced to translate in the hope that it would help them conquer Russia, as only the Mongols had succeeded in doing.
A horde-pleaser, well-written and full of surprises.Pub Date: March 2, 2004
ISBN: 0-609-61062-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.
A harrowing expedition to Antarctica, recounted by Departures senior features editor Sancton, who has reported from every continent on the planet.
On Aug. 16, 1897, the steam whaler Belgica set off from Belgium with young Adrien de Gerlache as commandant. Thus begins Sancton’s riveting history of exploration, ingenuity, and survival. The commandant’s inexperienced, often unruly crew, half non-Belgian, included scientists, a rookie engineer, and first mate Roald Amundsen, who would later become a celebrated polar explorer. After loading a half ton of explosive tonite, the ship set sail with 23 crew members and two cats. In Rio de Janeiro, they were joined by Dr. Frederick Cook, a young, shameless huckster who had accompanied Robert Peary as a surgeon and ethnologist on an expedition to northern Greenland. In Punta Arenas, four seamen were removed for insubordination, and rats snuck onboard. In Tierra del Fuego, the ship ran aground for a while. Sancton evokes a calm anxiety as he chronicles the ship’s journey south. On Jan. 19, 1898, near the South Shetland Islands, the crew spotted the first icebergs. Rough waves swept someone overboard. Days later, they saw Antarctica in the distance. Glory was “finally within reach.” The author describes the discovery and naming of new lands and the work of the scientists gathering specimens. The ship continued through a perilous, ice-littered sea, as the commandant was anxious to reach a record-setting latitude. On March 6, the Belgica became icebound. The crew did everything they could to prepare for a dark, below-freezing winter, but they were wracked with despair, suffering headaches, insomnia, dizziness, and later, madness—all vividly capture by Sancton. The sun returned on July 22, and by March 1899, they were able to escape the ice. With a cast of intriguing characters and drama galore, this history reads like fiction and will thrill fans of Endurance and In the Kingdom of Ice.
A rousing, suspenseful adventure tale.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-984824-33-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
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