Post-Soviet state collapse freed security professionals to enter private protection markets.

Evidence

In the Soviet republics, unlike in other former socialist countries, a plethora of candidates—from disbanded Red Army soldiers to unemployed athletes—is clamoring to man the protection market. In addition, ethnic groups with a reputation for private justice acquired in the black market under the communist regime, as well as muscular former party members, stand to take the lead in supplying private protection. According to a former black marketeer: “Widespread diversified criminal clans are already emerging in certain Soviet republics such as Armenia and Moldova. Whereas formerly these clans were used by politicians for their own purposes, now they are operating on their own and in pursuit of their own interests” (Moscow News [June 1991], 16). Since February 1992 the supply has one more source: Viktor Barannikov, chief of Russia’s security service, cut his staff from 36,000 to 2,800, a reduction unprecedented in KGB history (Kommersant, February 3, 1992). The parallel with Sicily is impressive: democracy and the market economy free these men from their bonds with the old communist barons, and their skills become marketable. — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 671

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s Gambetta model: ex-state security personnel become private protection suppliers, mirroring Mafia origins. Also parallels the post-Ottoman origin stories in the mafia literature. — connects to: Soviet bureaucrats reacted to reform by seizing state assets — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 108; Former Soviet elites converted state wealth into private oligarch fortunes in Ukraine. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 474