The Russian Mafia

Russian organized crime or Russian mafia (Russian: рoссийская мафия, translit. rossiyskaya mafiya,Russian: русская мафия, translit. russkaya mafiya), sometimes referred to as Bratva (Russian: братва: "brotherhood"), is a collective of various organized crime elements originating in the former Soviet Union.

Organized crime in Russia began in the imperial period of the Tsars, but it was not until the Soviet era that vory v zakone ("thieves-in-law") emerged as leaders of prison groups in gulags (Soviet prison labor camps), and their honor code became more defined. After World War II, the death of Joseph Stalin, and the fall of the Soviet Union, more gangs emerged in a flourishing black market, exploiting the unstable governments of the former Republics, and at its highest point, even controlling as much as two-thirds of the Russian economy.Louis Freeh, former director of the FBI, said that the Russian mafia posed the greatest threat to U.S. national security in the mid-1990s.

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