One of the unsung benefits, to the West, of the late Cold War, was that it restricted the activities of the organised crime of the former Soviet Union to within its territorial borders.
At the end of the Cold War, like some misguided, capitalist father, the West fetted the return of the prodical, welcoming Russia and its satelites back into the democratic, free-market fold, and in doing so, opened Pandora’s Box. :army:
There’s more than a small element of truth in your post.
However, I don’t see that said “Pandora’s Box” is in fact any worse than that unleashed upon a ridiculously naive Western world as happened with the liberation of Sicily, Naples, or Corsica or Marseilles.
Granted, the firearms used these days are probably more efficient, granted, the cost of paying out the necessary bribes to Police and or Customs services has increased, and granted the merchandise trafficked is probably more lethal than that purveyed in the 1940’s/1950’s.
However, the fundamentals have not much changed.
The Police, Customs, and Judiciary are as corrupt now as they were then, if not more so.
The ordinary citizen is liable to be judged guilty by association despite having no true connections to criminality either in governmental employ or that of organised crime: but will be paying high prices for any given commodity regardless.
In short, rien ne se change.
Respectful Regards Bravo32, Uyraell.
I agree, especially since those who were selected to serve in the various Eastern block secret police services were trained to be ruthless in their official duties, were then ready made for organized criminal activities once their State paychecks started to bounce. They had benefit of experience in dealing with those of the criminal guilds, and knew the infrastructure of it,and so had the connections to carry on the business. Crime moved to the private sector…
Agree in general.
I suspect that part of the problem flows from the black market and related attitudes and practices which arise under rapacious dictatorships and which encourage people to disregard that greedy authority in the interests of survival or even modest comforts. It creates an economic system below or in tandem with the main economy which is different to crime in the West but which also creates attitudes and practices which are the basis of crime once the dictatorship has gone, because a large part of the population has participated in and regards this unlawful system as acceptable. It’s a short step to condoning other activities which, at a local level, don’t seem much different because they’re only a little unlawful but in total support large scale criminal enterprises on a scale unimaginable in the West.
Don’t really agree - we no longer have the KGB running around handing money, guns and explosives to any nutter with a grudge (the whole alphabet soup of IRA, Eta, RAF, Bader-Meinhof, PLO, etc. were largely funded and supplied by the Soviets). In return for that, we have to put up with the identity of the various organised criminal syndicates changing - don’t forget that we’ve always had organised crime in the West, and that the ethnic/social makeup of these groups has always been in a state of flux.
That was at least organised and controlled for national political and strategic purposes.
The last thing the Soviets wanted was to provoke a conflict they didn’t want.
Who is controlling the current export of former Soviet weapons and dealings with weapons which previously were under Soviet control in their satellite and client states, which could lead to unpredictable conflicts?
Do the exporters have a national, or any other, political and or strategic purpose?
Or are they just flogging anything they can get their hands on to the highest bidder because they’re simply chasing the dollars?
We haven’t had this sort of crime in our criminal history, which suggests that it was carried out by people with high level military training rather than your average clumsy criminal. http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2010/03/10/196585_gold-coast-news.html
The Russian mob had a big toe-hold in the New York City area for a while. I think the biggest problem with them in relation to the various law enforcement entities charged to investigate them is that their pretty damn smart in comparison with other localized organized crime syndicates. Some have mentioned former KGB, GRU, military and Spetznaz going into business. But I think a larger problem was the number of ex-Soviet scientists and various other highly educated former gov’t elites that went into crime simply because that was the only way they could put food on the table. Maybe things are somewhat mitigated in recent years through attrition, and the fact many criminals can work in the Putin regime. 
But at one time this was a big problem. For a while, the Russian mob was intimidating Russian born hockey players earning big money in the National Hockey League or North America–one former player here with the Sabres routinely suffered beatings and concussions anytime he went home. But it seems they’re growing up a bit, and perhaps Putin’s and his cronies regime is cracking down a bit and cooperating with Western agencies such as Interpol. But for a while, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Russian gangsters brought a whole level of sophistication to organized crime in the United States and Canada. I think the next big thing will be the Chinese Triads, though. Of course, they’ve been around for a long while now. But they’re probably going to get more access to big money as China gradually opens more…