CONTENTS

List of illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgements

A note on transliteration

Introduction

Part One Foundations

1 Kain’s land

2 Eating Khitrovka soup

3 The birth of the vory

4 Thieves and bitches

5 Thief life

Part Two Emergence

6 The unholy trinities

7 Gorbachev’s gangsters

8 The ‘Wild Nineties’ and the rise of the avtoritety

Part Three Varieties

9 Gangs, networks and brotherhoods

10 The Chechen: The gangster’s gangster

11 The Georgian: The expatriate vor

12 The gangster-internationalist

Part Four Future

13 New times, new vory

14 Mafiya evolutions

15 The criminal wars

16 Bandit Russia: The theft of a nation?

Glossary of commonly used terms

Notes

Bibliography

Index