VODKA, HOOKERS, AND THE RUSSIAN MAFIA

Motivational speaker and leadership trainer Serio details how he navigated social and cultural expectations in the USSR while observing the Russian Mafia and the Soviet government in this memoir.

In 1984, the author, a sophomore at the State Univ. of New York, Albany, selected a course titled “Who Are the Soviets?” After becoming engrossed in the kaleidoscopic culture of the Soviet Union, he immersed himself in studying the Russian language—a decision that, by 1986, led Serio to visit Moscow. The author discovered that the preconceptions that he held about the Soviet Union were far off, and he quickly met friendly people: “When you’re primed to look for an enemy, you’ll find one,” he concludes. Serio returned repeatedly to the Soviet Union; by age 23, as protégé to Dick Ward, vice chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago and vice president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, Serio attains a position that alters his adult life. It leads him to a job studying the Soviet government’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and the violent Russian Mafia, who are shockingly brutal in their methods. Along the way, a realization regarding Americans’ attitudes toward US-Russia relations unfolds: “We have a bad habit of forgetting our own tumultuous past and excessively corrupt present—and tend to hold others to a standard we ourselves would be hard pressed to meet.” In this narrative, the author offers a highly specific historical treasure trove about the world of law enforcement and villainy in the Soviet Union in its final years. Along the way, Serio effectively humanizes the memorable people he met—such as Volodya (an affectionate nickname for “Vladimir”), an artist at the defense factory Hammer and Sickle Metalworks—who embody the Russian peoples’ frustrations, realizations, sufferings, and disappointments with the country’s largest gang: the Communist Party. It’s an engaging read that unexpectedly fuses elements of the novels The Godfather and Gorky Park while also showing the storied stalwartness of the Russian citizenry.

A captivating overview of some of the hard realities of Soviet life.