The Soviet Way of Crime : Beating the System in the Soviet Union and the U.S.A.

Rosner, Lydia S.

South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc., 1986. Hardcover. Grey boards with maroon lettering and stripes. xvii, [3], 140 pp. with no illus. Good, clean, tight contents but with ex-lib. marks; spine sticker removed with residual mark. Item #159455
ISBN: 9780897890984

This is a book which challenges criminologists and sociologists, [it is] one of our first criminological glimpses into the subterranean aspects of a society that has long remained closed to outsiders . . . it holds the prospect of breathing new life into the old debate about the relationship between immigrants and crime. Contemporary Sociology. This study examines criminal patterns among Russian immigrants who have left the Soviet Union since 1973 and settled in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, New York. Unlike earlier immigrants, most of whom left behind peasant societies, these recent immigrants emerged from a more industrialized society. Data were obtained from interviews with immigrants (N=35), law enforcement officials and others. Crime is an essential ingredient in Soviet citizens' way of life. The ability to obtain wealth rests on control of goods and services illegally diverted from the state via bribery and corruption. At every level of society, those who can steal or divert official supplies do so. A large proportion of Soviet emigres bring to the United States social and psychological patterns of behavior imposed upon them in crime-ridden Soviet society. Thus, they become ivolved in forged drivers' licenses and other illegal documents and obtaining state benefits to which they are not entitled. These types of crime are not the crimes of peasants but of urbanites prepared to beat the bureaucracy.