Are you not paid for months on end or is your pay enough to last only three days? Are you not ashamed that your country, with its tremendous natural and intellectual potential, is falling to the development level of the Third World? Are you afraid to go out at night, because you could easily fall prey to street toughs high on drugs? And perhaps you are even more frightened that your teenage daughter will get hooked? You turn on the television and are shocked by what you watch: tasteless, dull, and some of the words you hear in children's programs could make a trooper blush. You ask yourself what is goingon. You listen to politicians and some blame the Left, others the world bourgeoisie, or the IMF. Still others explain that all this is an inevitable side effect of transition from totalitarianism to the market economy and democracy. You listen to them and feel that none of the arguments is satisfactory. You consider other countries which quickly passed this transition period and with much fewer losses. People live in a civilized manner there. You are dubious, and well you should be. The main reason why people live in Ukraine in a way considered totally unacceptable in the civilized world is different: there an undeclared but vicious war between the underworld and the state and the underworld is winning – at least such is the opinion of Yevhen Marchuk, former chief of the SBU Ukrainian secret police, ex-Premier, currently People's Deputy of Ukraine. There is little doubt that this man is one of Ukraine's most competent experts in combating organized crime, for this was his job as deputy head of the Ukrainian KGB's fifth directorate. Not so long ago he defended a Candidate of Science thesis called "The Criminological and Criminal Legal Characteristics of Underworld Organizations."
Vadym Hetman's and other recent sensational contract murders of politicians and journalists are graphic evidence that organized crime, the Mafia, has gained unprecedented power in Ukraine. Murder is considered the last resort even in Italy, because it creates too much unwelcome publicity, whereupon the state metes out severe retribution. The fact that Ukrainian dons resort to this extreme measure increasingly often shows beyond a reasonable doubt that the racket has penetrated the upper echelons, spreading far and wide, so much so they feel free to put out contracts. It is also shown by the fact that not one such crime has been solved.
Naturally, the underworld has its people everywhere and influences every walk of life in Ukraine, but more on this later. There is no denying that organized crime is to some or degree active in practically every country. But why does it have such fantastic influence in Ukraine, something the US or Italian Mafiosi could only dream of?
According to the laws of social progress, any system, particularly the underworld, tends to spread its influence to all spheres – political, religious, and economic. This is only natural: the stronger this influence the better off are the members of a given criminal structure. At the level of a small-time gang this trend is manifest in increasing its numerical strength, keeping local cops on their payroll, etc. After getting stronger this gang will try to destroy its rivals. The latter, of course, have not been sitting on their hands and got reinforced in the meantime. This can result in a kind of containing balance of forces. Now try to apply this rough scheme to high-level organized crime. Here the scope is different. Whole enterprises, individual politicians, and even whole political parties are being bought. The racket has its people in important government positions, and of course among the law enforcement authorities. The Mafia's main rival here is the state, and from this flows the inverse relationship between the state's strength and decisiveness in fighting crime on the one hand and the strength and influence of criminality on the other.
Organized crime did not originate only with the collapse of the Soviet Union and transition to the market system and democracy. Already in the 1970s, criminals above the law strove to increase their influence by corrupting government officials and did so quite effectively. In the 1980s this danger became so great that the KGB was put in charge of fighting organized crime. Special departments were set up working on a broad spectrum of issues, ranging from research and analysis to the formation of a broad network of agents not only to catch a certain gang leader, but also to study all the elements of the underworld system and work out effective countermeasures. Without doubt these efforts produced a tangible effect, but then perestroika began and the attendant phenomena rendered law and enforcement agencies paralyzed while the rackets rose on the crest of the wave of democracy, reaching the political summits. Now one of the syndicate's priorities was incapacitating law enforcement authorities and they did a good job, KGB included. In a word, objective processes involved in the USSR's dissolution offered organized crime a unique opportunity to expand and strengthen their power. They did not pass it up. We owe numerous current problems to precisely that period.
Another opportunity was the complex economic situation in the former Soviet republics, when the planned socialist economy was destroyed and the market one yet to be created, and the underworld turned this to its best advantage. A clumsy combination of bureaucratic and economic methods of management gave a green light for corporate bureaucratic clans and the latter have since often become very influential in the country's politics and economy. At the same time, an unbiased analysis of the Ukrainian laws shows them to have been quite instrumental in this sense, especially in developing the shadow economy which is the basis of organized crime. Although this is only natural, considering the racket's political activities since the fall of the CPSU.
Illicit business is actually encouraged by Ukrainian legislation. For a businessman acting in strict conformity with the law is tantamount to suicide: I mean the Ukrainian tax system. Thus, most of them have to break the law, and this makes them completely exposed to the underworld. And the latter uses this to build its own strength. Why the shadow economy? Because not only profits are kept in the shadows, away from Tax Inspection eyes; also, economic relationships acquire monstrous forms – like extortion or protection money.
The situation on the job market best suits the syndicate, being an inexhaustible source of manpower. Chronic wage arrears, low pay, hidden unemployment, being unable to feed one's family makes people – especially the young – an easy prey to syndicate recruiters. A million other problems could be cited, all boiling down to one axiom: the authorities have created conditions in which being honest and law-abiding just does not pay, which, of course, benefits the underworld.
And now ask yourself: haven't you heard much if not all of this before? How many times did you hear about taxes from politicians and economists, and that they should be changed? Everyone seems to understand the urgency, yet nothing is happening. Why? The economic situation is going, from bad to worse and we have a lot of topnotch economists ready to offer effective solutions to so many economic problems. Why? Because such changes and such solutions would be damaging to the syndicate, depriving it of excess profits, thus weakening its power. Unless a heavy blow is dealt the underworld, unless at least some of its operators are removed from the power structures, no reforms will ever be carried out in Ukraine. Here fighting corruption is of primary importance.
Organized crime cannot exist without corruption, because the latter is its main weapon and means of influencing the state bureaucracy. Without corruption the rackets would be unable to perform large-scale economic operations; the Mafia needs benefits, privileges, and exemptions, which only top-level officials can provide. This is precisely why the developed Western and Oriental countries spend so much in terms of money and intellect to combat corruption, aware that it is the cost of their survival as polities. Any society exposed to mounting unrestrained corruption will sooner or later find itself under a terrorist regime or collapse, socially as well as economically. True, a degree of corruption exists in many countries, but what one might call the Ukrainian phenomenon is an undisguised propaganda of the underworld ideology, using television, newspapers, and other perfectly legitimate structures. Of course, the underworld used to propagandize itself previously when ex-convicts taught local youth criminal slang which was considered cool. Now one can hear it more and more often on television and read it in newspapers. You can make an experiment. Buy a dozen newspapers and count the criminal slang expressions there. You can hear such expressions from politicians and even statesmen. Murderers are now called killers (until a couple of years ago the word "killer" was practically never used in Ukrainian, or Russian for that matter) and you can see them in movies and read about them in bestsellers, portrayed as romantic heroes. Racketeering and prostitution are now considered prestigious occupations and belonging to a gang a sign of well-being. Something incredible is happening before our very eyes: criminals and crooks, habitually despised in Ukraine, are trying to pose as respectable, imposing persons, aided by the creative intelligentsia and authorities. What is even more perplexing is that they quite often become ones.
The underworld is prepared to pay staggering sums to brainwash the populace. When it succeeds in instilling its ideas in a majority of community members (and this process is well underway), the state will stand a very slim chance, if any, of overcoming organized crime. As a matter of fact, the latter has become a state within a state, with all the attributes: underworld bureaucracy, politicians, economists, and media. Their subsequent course is not hard to get: crowding out those in power and taking over. World experience shows that the outcome will be the reign of a handful of "dons," misery for 95% of the populace, and total murderous terror.
At present, there is an increasingly popular theory (and its growing popularity makes one wonder). Its main idea is that one just has to be patient and somehow make it through this period, that the underworld leaders will eventually decide to end such practices and will start living in accordance with the laws of Ukraine. Very unlikely. Organized crime and democracy are incompatible. The underworld is an inherent monopolist and brooks no competition, which means that it must be fought against as a major threat to Ukraine's national security.
Are there any effective means of combating this powerful syndicate? Of course. Subject to the condition that one uses a system of carefully developed and planned methods. Then victory is practically certain. Fighting the shadow economy comes first, for this will weaken the underworld's might and make it possible to attack it from other approaches, namely political and social. The following five steps in the economic sphere could have a good effect.
(1) Providing favorable conditions for the domestic producer and easing the tax burden on Ukraine's production-oriented enterprises.
(2) Enacting laws imposing rigid economic and financial restrictions on enterprises.
(3) Strict monitoring of citizens' incomes and expenses, starting at, say, 200 untaxed minimum wages. When a modestly paid public servant builds a cottage worth several tens of thousands of dollars this is, mildly speaking, amazing (the English-speaking reader should remember that in Ukraine a thousand dollars can buy at least ten times more than anywhere in the West).
(4) Maximum possible reductions in cash payments; this will make it possible to ascertain quickly the difference between one's income and outlays.
(5) Law enforcement agencies assigned to closely follow the implementation of all these laws.
Of course, a newspaper article does not allow space enough for a detailed program of struggle against organized crime, and this is not necessary. It is important to understand that no changes of nationwide importance will be made in Ukraine as long as the underworld remains strong, and not even the most brilliant economist will be able to carry out reforms as long as the state remains the losing side in this battle.
Photo by Valery Miloserdov, The Day:
World historical experience shows that flourishing criminality can lead only to the impoverishment of 95% of the population and total bloody terror







