HSE Publishing House

The book explores the role of organized might or power resources in the economic relations of 1990’s Russia. The main focus of the book is on various informal power organizations and private security firms staffed with diverse personnel ranging from professional criminals to workers of law enforcement bodies. These organizations were actively pursuing a specific business activity, they employed violence and threats, they provided safety, resolved conflicts etc. The role of this kind of activity is revealed, which the author designates as violent entrepreneurship, typical of the process of formation of primary institutional milieu of the market economy. The book examines the logic and the driving force behind the transformation of organized criminal groups into regional business groups and the consolidation of the Russian state.

Addressed to students and postgraduates, lecturers and researchers in the area of sociology, economics, and law, as well as a wide circle of readers interested in the issues of emergence of shadow economies and criminalization of economic relations.