Oligarch Evolution: Sportsmen - Violent Gang - Racketeering Mafia - Businessmen - Political Party - President

The history of Post-Soviet Russia provides one of the best study grounds to explore what can go wrong in democratisation. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West was confident that former communist countries could easily become liberal democracies by giving them free market capitalism, the rest would follow. Francis Fukuyama famously postulated that liberal democracies would eventually be established everywhere and that would be the end of history. Fast forward 30 years and we see that not only has liberal democracy ever materialised in Russia, but is under threat in many Western countries.

When I first visited Russia in 1999 it was much more reminiscent of the Wild West than a civilised West. People talked about mafia and oligarchs incessantly, and local clan leaders would go clubbing with guns and bodyguards in their entourage. Market capitalism was there, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s had come to Russia, but few of the native Moscovites would consider it a blessing. To many, it seemed a deterioration in civilization rather than an improvement. What had gone wrong? Didn’t Russia have everything to be on its way to becoming a liberal democracy?

In “The Political Economy of Protection Rackets in the Past and the Present” (2000) Vadim Volkov describes the rise of gang violence and power in Russia. As the Soviet Union started to weaken towards the end of the 80s, Russia saw an increase in gang formation and violence. These gangs typically sprang up around

• Army recruits
• Sports Clubs
• Ex-convicts
• Cossacks

Volkov describes the patterns behind these gangs, whose members would typically have a warrior culture, macho culture, an honour code similar and be driven by wealth, status and power. Volkov argues that this is anything but a usual pattern, it’s a frequent pattern we see in history among aristocrats, mafiosi, and pirates:

That particular group of fighting specialists which stood at the origin of political power and state formation is known under many different names, including definitions such as "nobility" and "aristocracy". One could also use the terms "warrior community" or simply "wielders of force"to recognize how the use and management of organized force determined the social existence of a group, notwithstanding the fact that the strength of this determination has declined with the growth of the modern state and economy. Whatever their historical guise, wielders of force share certain related features. The characteristic occupations of members of this group have always been war and government (later also sport) . These activities served as the permanent source of income in the form of booty, tribute, or tax. Accordingly, warrior communities abstained from any industrial activities. Their superior social position was articulated, justified, and reproduced by a particular code of honor, a set of internally coherent patterns of normative culture. So the social definition of wielders of force consists in their being the military-political, predatory, leisure, and noble class all at the same time

The Russian gang culture initially was very focussed on physical prowess and protection racketeering and it didn’t take long before feuding among clans started. Again, we see this phenomenon everywhere in history: clan wars, aristocratic feuding, mafia vendettas. Last, but not least this pattern is omnipresent in pastoralist mutual raiding, in which I hypothesise that these rivalries have their origin.

However, violence does not get you very far in most of our modern world. And the Russian gangs and clans that understood that quickly moved beyond violence-based racketeering. Volkov provides the example of a gang from Yekaterinburg (a city in the Ural Mountains), that had a stellar career, quickly moving beyond violence onto business and politics, where more money and power are to be found:

Uralmashevskaya racketeer gang has thus undergone the following evolution: Specialists in violence - former sportsmen - create an organization, a violence-managing agency that allows them to extract tribute from the local business by offering protection. Having established a kind of territorial control, the agency wages a war with competing violence-managing agencies. It survives and wins the elimination contest, expanding both in terms of territory and commercial opportunities. Having attained the monopoly position among informal enforcers, uralmashevskaya makes a con- scious choice of economic policy of reasonable taxation and reliable protection of property, thus creating a relatively secure environment and competitive advantages for its business partners. In the longer run, protection rents and reputation result in the growing capital accumulation and further economic expansion. Uralmash turns into a "financial-industrial group". Parallel to that, it concludes an informal pact and then establishes institutionalized relations with the legitimate regional government. Finally, it makes an effort to legalize its political and economic power by registering as Social-Political Union (OPS) Uralmash and actively seeks to achieve legitimacy with and support from the local population

The most successful Russian oligarchs never were part of violent gangs in the first place, but they had been in the right positions, with the right connection and instincts for using legal loopholes or how to get away with illegal actions. I mentioned nomadic pastoralists above because I think these patterns are typical of evolutionary pastoralist types as opposed to farmer and forager types. These different types can be represented in Shalom’s circle of universal values, where they are high in valuing success, wealth, power, novelty and fun.

Of course, by far not all pastoralist types are criminals. They are often beloved entertainers (Elvis and Shakira), sports people (Messi and Ronaldo) or just ordinary people. However, they can be particularly frequently found in the groups Volkov identified: sports, military, convicts and certain ethnic groups with a high amount of pastoral genetic heritage, like Arabs and Chechens.

When Putin came to power in 2000, people loved him for putting up a fight with the oligarchs. However, as far as we now know Putin only put up a fight with the oligarchs when they entered what he considered his territory. Putin only showed them that he was the most powerful of them. When pastoralist raiders took over farming populations in the Bronze Age these farming populations allowed them to stay in power because they became their protectors. From who? From other pastoralist clans, of course. Putin has played his game well, always protecting Russians from external dangers such as Chechens or internal ones, like the oligarchs, thus making him a hero rather than a villain, cementing his power on the way. Of course, Putin’s career didn’t start out as a protection racketeer, but as a spy.

There are stark similarities between these racketeering groups in the Russia in the 90s and today’s online communities that are focussed on white and male supremacist ideas. Groups that use people’s insecurities to stir up feelings of government incompetence or even evilness, using e.g. Corona vaccines to polarize society.

Check out my book Understanding History: Herders, Horticulturalists and Hunter-Gatherers for more: