economic crimes.” Crime continued to flourish: the new criminals
could provide the “deficit goods” the market failed to produce. By
the 1980s, most Soviet citizens lived na levo—literally on the left—
relying on the criminal sector for everything from certain foods and
medicines to building supplies and theater tickets. By the 1980s, the
vory v zakonehad begun to establish an alliance with party bosses.
Efforts by KGB Chair Yuri Andropovto disrupt this alliance failed.
The executionof the manager of Moscow’s best-known food store in
1984 did nothing to slow the corruption of the system.
Russian crime was the element in Soviet society best prepared to
take advantage of the collapse of the system. With alliances with
party bosses, the police, and even the KGB, crime bosses could le-
gitimatize themselves as business people with the power to move
money and to kill. In the 1990s, Russian organized crime went inter-
national, and Russian criminals were arrested in Miami, New York,
Paris, London, and Brussels. In the United States, Russian organized
crime has been engaged in a number of white-collar criminal scams.
Crime was one of the communist system’s heritages. In creating a
system that was both brutal and massively incompetent, the citizens
found a need for suppliers of deficit items, just as Americans of the
1920s found a need for rum runners and bootleggers. The problem for
fledgling Russian democracy is that organized crime is now deeply
entrenched in the system.ORGANS (COMPETENT ORGANS). During the post-Stalin period,
the KGBoften referred to itself as the “organs of state security,” or
the “competent organs.”ORLOV, ALEXANDER (1899–1973). One of the most important of
the early Soviet defectors, Orlov provided information that was long
ignored by the West. Born Aleksandr Felbin, Orlov joined the Cheka
during the civil war. In the 1920s and 1930s, he served as an NKVD
illegalin Western Europe and the United States, recruiting and run-
ning agents. In 1936 Joseph Stalinsent Orlov to Spain, where he
served in a dual intelligence and diplomatic capacity during the
Spanish Civil War.
As Stalin’s rezidentin Spain, Orlov ruthlessly purged the Repub-
lican government of dissident Trotskyites. He also arranged for the184 •ORGANS (COMPETENT ORGANS)06-313 G-P.qxd 7/27/06 7:56 AM Page 184