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The Kazan phenomenon (russian: link=no, Казанский феномен, ''Kazanskiy fenomen'') was a term used by journalists to describe the rise in street-gang activity in the city of
Kazan Kazan ( ; rus, Казань, p=kɐˈzanʲ; tt-Cyrl, Казан, ''Qazan'', IPA: Help:IPA/Tatar, ɑzan is the capital city, capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia. The city lies at the confluence of the Volga and t ...
in the
RSFSR The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
and later, the
Russian Federation Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
. From the early 1970s, Kazan had a particularly bad reputation for
juvenile delinquency Juvenile delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is the act of participating in unlawful behavior as a minor or individual younger than the statutory age of majority. In the United States of America, a juvenile delinquent is a perso ...
, and a substantial portion of young males in the area of both Russian and
Tatar The Tatars ()Tatar
in the Collins English Dictionary
is an umbrella term for different
background joined youth gangs, which fought amongst each other for territory, principally using improvised or
melee weapon A melee weapon, hand weapon or close combat weapon is any handheld weapon used in hand-to-hand combat, i.e. for use within the direct physical reach of the weapon itself, essentially functioning as an additional (and more impactful) extension of th ...
s (at the time firearms were not widespread in Russia and were hard to come by). Between 1985 and 1999 the rate of crimes committed by sixteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds in
Tatarstan The Republic of Tatarstan (russian: Республика Татарстан, Respublika Tatarstan, p=rʲɪsˈpublʲɪkə tətɐrˈstan; tt-Cyrl, Татарстан Республикасы), or simply Tatarstan (russian: Татарстан, tt ...
(until 1992 the Tatar ASSR) increased 1.7 times. Struggles for domination of public space, where success in the appropriation of resources was often predicated on one's aptitude and skills in violence, forced many young men unaffiliated with gangs to reconsider their options in the face of increasing insecurity. The crime wave caused a
moral panic A moral panic is a widespread feeling of fear, often an irrational one, that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society. It is "the process of arousing social concern over an issue", us ...
amongst the Soviet population, as not only was such criminality traditionally seen as a product of the capitalist West, but it also involved the children of local officials. During the rise of the
Russian mafia Russian organized crime or Russian mafia (, ), otherwise known as Bratva (), is a collective of various organized crime elements originating in the former Soviet Union. The initialism OPG is Organized Criminal (''prestupnaya'' in Russian) ...
in the late 1980s and 1990s, the street gangs grew into more sophisticated and organised criminal enterprises. Due to the lack of profitability in running
protection rackets A protection racket is a type of racket and a scheme of organized crime perpetrated by a potentially hazardous organized crime group that generally guarantees protection outside the sanction of the law to another entity or individual from vio ...
in
Tatarstan The Republic of Tatarstan (russian: Республика Татарстан, Respublika Tatarstan, p=rʲɪsˈpublʲɪkə tətɐrˈstan; tt-Cyrl, Татарстан Республикасы), or simply Tatarstan (russian: Татарстан, tt ...
, the Kazan gangs started to move to
St Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
, where they got into conflict with the local Tambov gang. The Kazan mafia was known to be particularly cruel in their extortion tactics, and periodically brought in reinforcements from Tatarstan. The Slavic gangsters of the city banded together to fight this emerging threat, and eventually forced the Tatars out of St Petersburg.Volkov, Vadim; Violent Entrepreneurs; 2002


Emergence

The breakdown of the key institutions of the
Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
state—the
command economy A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, p ...
, the state and legal apparatus, and the enterprise-based
social welfare Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...
system—was accompanied by a violent division of assets and resources. State companies, now being
privatized Privatization (also privatisation in British English) can mean several different things, most commonly referring to moving something from the public sector into the private sector. It is also sometimes used as a synonym for deregulation when ...
, began to operate in an unfamiliar market environment. Ordinary business functions such as raising capital, ensuring supplies, and making customers pay for goods and services could be extremely difficult to carry out and fraught with danger. Not only was the country in the grip of an economic crisis but the state legal apparatus was inefficient, and a functioning banking system was years away. In this chaotic environment, both public and private companies became besieged by predators who were keen to access their assets and who used threats, bribes, and offers of "protection" to lay their hands on a company's money, products, and shares. In
Tatarstan The Republic of Tatarstan (russian: Республика Татарстан, Respublika Tatarstan, p=rʲɪsˈpublʲɪkə tətɐrˈstan; tt-Cyrl, Татарстан Республикасы), or simply Tatarstan (russian: Татарстан, tt ...
despite the economic crisis, many attractive assets remained. Although by the mid-1990s industrial output in the republic had decreased by 33.9% compared to the beginning of the decade, the economic crisis of the first half of the 1990s was less severe than in most Russian regions. The existence of a large economic base inherited from the Soviet times, together with the historical presence of gangs, helps to explain the particularly rapid development of organized crime in Tatarstan in the 1990s. These newly privatizing companies were exposed to extortion from bandit gangs, or indeed the state security services and police, which emerged as one of the key
racketeering Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. Originally and ...
groups in post-Soviet Russia. Alongside the ailing ex-Soviet companies there emerged a vast street-level economy and nascent small businesses. The private economic sphere was initially launched during
perestroika ''Perestroika'' (; russian: links=no, перестройка, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg) was a political movement for reform within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s widely associated wit ...
when
Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Comm ...
’s 1987 Law on Cooperation allowed groups of citizens to establish cooperative businesses. These businesses immediately became targets for racketeers. The first case of racketeering in Kazan was registered in 1988 when the street group Dom Obuvi (literally "House of Shoes," a shoe store) attempted to extort protection money from a builders’ cooperative. Although at the beginning of the 1990s, most cooperatives disappeared under the pressures of state taxation and competition from new private companies, new small businesses soon began to emerge, mainly in the unregulated informal and semiformal service sector: outdoor markets, small stalls and kiosks, small
currency exchange A bureau de change (plural bureaux de change, both ) (British English) or currency exchange (American English) is a business where people can exchange one currency for another. Nomenclature Although originally French, the term "bureau de chan ...
businesses etc. With hardly any protection from the state, and lacking the means to protect itself, the sector was easy prey for a variety of predators. All over Russia, street neighbourhood groups were at the forefront of the new processes of accumulation, although the specific dynamics of relationships between street groups and other violent actors still await investigation. In Kazan (and Tatarstan in general) the majority of organized crime groups rose out of street social organizations. The vast majority of these organizations started out as youth territorial groups of "hooligans". Contributions to these funds were systematically collected through extortion and other criminal means. In Kazan, most such groups, excluding specialized gangs such as drug gangs, emerged from territorial youth groups. Currently, all such communities have youth gangs as part of their structure. The main Kazan gruppirovki—Kvartala, Mirnyi, Shatura, 56th Kvartal, Sots-gorod, Telestudiia, Khadi Taktash, Zhilka, Nizy, Boriskovo, Pervaki, Tukaevo— sought to divide the city among them. To retain and expand their control over territory, they needed to mobilize significant forces. They put serious pressure on local young people to join their gangs.


Social composition

At the end of the 1980s, Kazan gang membership was skewed toward working-class young people. In the 1990s this began to change with the massive collapse of livelihoods, these gangs began to draw their members from a wider range of social backgrounds, including young people from educated families. The gangs also began to attract university students. Further, even as street gangs remained a youth phenomenon, their membership was becoming older. Toward the middle of the 1990s, a significant proportion of members were over twenty-five, and many were in legitimate employment. The ethnic backgrounds of gang members tended to be representative of the local population, although gangs formed by communities of migrants (Georgians, Azerbaijani, Chechens, Dagestani) also appeared across Russia. The Tatarstan gangs were ethnically mixed, uniting Russians and Tatars and any other ethnicities living in their neighbourhoods.


References

{{Reflist


See also

* Gopniki * Thief in law *
Solntsevskaya Bratva The Solntsevskaya Organized Crime Group (russian: Солнцевская организованная преступная группировка), also known as the Solntsevskaya Bratva (russian: link=no, Солнцевская братва), is a ...
Crime in the Soviet Union Crime in Russia Gangs in Russia Organized crime in Russia Street gangs Kazan Urban decay in Europe Russian culture