Reorganizing Crime. Mafia and Anti-Mafia in Post-Soviet Georgia

Thieves-in-law' (vory-v-zakone in Russian) are career criminals belonging to a criminal fraternity that began in the 1930s in the Soviet prison camps. For reasons that the book attempts to explain, thieves-in-law became exceptionally prevalent in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Here, by the 1990s, they formed a mafia network—criminal associations that attempt to monopolize protection in legal and illegal sectors of the economy. At this time, the mafia was in many ways more powerful t...