Racket is a criminal seizure of other people's income with the use of violence and threats. This word gained popularity in the perestroika period, in the nineties of the twentieth century.
Racketers were called medium-sized criminal gangs engaged in "protection". They forcibly imposed their security services on various small cooperatives or firms, of which there were many at that time. The objectives of such services were to obtain part of the gang’s profit from the merchant, for which the racketeers defended him from attacks by other competing groups.
Gangster romance
Racket 90 years was a real scourge of the country, but then not everyone understood the horror of what was happening. The image of the racketeer was shrouded in a halo of romanticism and fearlessness, and
public consciousness was deliberately formed in this direction
. The gangs consisted mainly of former athletes and the military, who, due to state reforms, lost their beloved business and fell below the poverty line, and a meaningless existence awaited them.
At the head of the groups were usually former criminals. Having seen enough cheap western fighters, they introduced the concept of "racket" in the late eighties.
Why is this possible?
A racket is a criminal, violent seizure of most of the profits.
With the beginning of official permission for entrepreneurial activity and the appearance of the first merchants in the USSR, extortion became the main "business" for gangs. By the mid-nineties of the twentieth century, they controlled almost 85% of enterprises, except those that were involved in the security business. Only organizations that were under direct law enforcement protection did not fall under the “roof” of racketeering.
The first entrepreneurs did not receive any legal support and, in order to survive, were forced to cooperate with criminals. Merchants were often involved in gang warfare over zones of influence; there was no one to ask for help, since racketeering is not only bandits. A large part of
law enforcement officials was corrupt and connected with racketeering. An article of the Criminal Code, where entrepreneurship was outlawed, was canceled only at the end of 1991.
Dashing 90s
At the “criminal appeal” that sounded, young offspring from the social lower classes rushed to the gangs. Children from dysfunctional families, where mothers counted every penny, and fathers often beat them on a drunken bench. They didn’t go to big cities for study - they attracted easy ways of profit, impunity and permissiveness. It was fashionable to go “into bandits”, racketeering became almost an official way of earning.
Such small gang members settled in rented apartments of eight people each, slept on the floor, on mattresses, received $ 500 salary, had one used car for five people.
At first, all these gangs had enough space, but the more they became, the more difficult it was to divide the cities into zones of influence. And then the shooting started ...
Gang Wars
Despite the widespread belief that the bandits of the 90s, racketeering, rampant violence appeared solely due to the criminal world, this cannot be clearly stated.
Gang wars began in 1993, which coincided with the peak of political struggle within the ruling Russian elite. Then the first armed clashes began in Chechnya, which grew a year later into a real war. All events began almost simultaneously and continued in parallel. This makes us think that all three phenomena have one source. And not criminals at all, but living according to its own, distinct from other laws, special caste rules then.
Never know the exact number of crimes committed by bandits in those days. Only in Moscow during the time that the investigation was ongoing, about fifty murders were uncovered, and centners seized weapons and explosives.
In 1994, the largest number of gang bosses were killed in the capital. In this war it was impossible to understand where the friend is, where is the enemy, who is fighting with whom. And now it will forever remain unknown who killed whom.
In post-perestroika times, many gangs created their own security structures and officially legalized, and the term "racketeering" went out of use. Many of the former authorities have gone into business or politics.
Gang fights, groups, racketeering - all this remained in the last century and has already become pages of history. It's time to draw conclusions in order to avoid repetition.