Countries undergoing major social and legal transitions typically experience a light, but relatively insignificant, increase in crime. However, in the past decade, many transitional countries in Eastern Europe, and Russia in particular, have experienced a surge in criminal activities that came about through the collaboration of diverse players-such as criminals, state officials, businesspersons, and law enforcement-into organized networks aimed to obtain financial and economic gains. In this process, two interdependent tendencies have become apparent: the "economization" of organized crime and the increased organization of economic crime itself. Both trends have led to a fundamentally new phenomenon in Russia, the Organized Corruption Network (OCN), which is a symbiosis that is a direct result of corruption, organized crime and economic crime within the Yeltsin and the Putin times.

PrefaceList of FiguresAcknowledgmentsChapter I. IntroductionDefinitions of Organized Crime (OC), Russian Organized Crime, and Organized Corruption Network (OCN). Organization of the BookChapter II. Roots of Russian Organized Crime2.1 Development of Criminal Professionals 16th - 19th Century2.2 Soviet Period: the vory v zakone in 1920s-1990s2.3 Gorbachev's Economic and Social Reforms2.4 The End of 90's - 2008 (OC-OCN) (2 Figures of OC)2.5 Transformation and AdaptationChapter III. Organized Crime, Businesses, and Local Bureaucracy3.1 Features of the Russian Organized Crime3.2 Social and Legal Causes of the Economy Criminalization3.3 Regional Organized Crime Groups (Profiles; 2 Figures)3.4 Turf WarsChapter IV. Corruption in the Government: the Origins and Tendency4.1 The Soviet Roots of Corruption: Social and Historic Phenomenon4.2 Transitional Period: Stages, Tendency, and Development4.3 Factors Promoting Corruption (Anticorruption legislation)4.4 Corruption and Public serviceChapter V. Organized Corruption Networks5.1 Corruption and Organized Crime Diffusion into the System of Civil Service5.2 Types, Forms and Methods of the OCN Control Over Territories, Enterprises, and the Economy (OCN Definition, Distinction from Criminal Network, Structure, Figures)5.3 Cases of CorruptionChapter VI. Ways to Fight OCN: Law Enforcement Services6.1 Structure and Legislation6. 2 Criminal Code and Law Enforcements in Combating OCNChapter VII. The International Reach7.1 Comparative Dimensions of Russian Organized Corruption Networks7.2 Implications for the FutureBibliographyIndex