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Title: Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America by Robert I. Friedman ISBN: 0-316-29474-8 Publisher: Little Brown & Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.43 (35 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: I returned it
Comment: I waited for this book with great anticipation. Ever since reading Handelman's "Comrade Criminal," I have been interested in the Russian mafiya.
But I think Handelman's book spoiled this one for me. "Comrade Criminal" focused on the organized crime situation in Russia. However, it had some fairly interesting tidbits about the expansion of the mobs into the United States and other countries.
Friedman's book was a little too breathless and exaggerated for me. For example, there was his claim that the Genovese Crime Family was earning billions of dollars. That seems a bit much. I could believe it of the Cali Drug Cartel certainly, but not an association of thugs that the FBI has decimated in the last twenty years.
I also found myself losing confidence in the author for another exaggeration. According to one expert drawn on by PBS's Frontline program about the mafiya, Vyacheslav Ivankov, the Russian gangster who sent the nasty Valentine's Day card to the author, may have been a big fish, but he probably was not "the Red Godfather" of America.
A final irritant was Friedman's getting the name of the DEA wrong. It's the "Drug Enforcement Administration" not "Drug Enforcement Agency." It's a small mistake, but it does make you wonder how closely the book was fact-checked (and how much the author really spent around DEA agents who would have certainly set him straight).
So I'd recommend that readers get "Comrade Criminal" and not this book.
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting Read
Comment: This book is an interesting read about the Russian Mafia. However, if you do not know much about Russian organized crime before you read the book, you might easily be mislead by its content. The main innacuracy in this book is Friedman's labeling the Russian mob, the Russian Jewish mob. First of all, the idea that most of the Russian Mafiya is Jewish is absolutely false. In the book, he labeled people like Ivankov and Komorov as being Jews. This is a ridiculous assumption that any Russian would laugh at. The majority of the mob is not Jewish at all, and are actually former Russian criminals and KGB and military operatives. The reason that Friedman got this idea about the Mobsters being Jewish is because many of the Russian criminals in America came to America in the early 1990'a with fake documents saying that they were Jewish when, in fact, they were just Russian criminals.
Rating: 1
Summary: A Lightweight Page-Turner
Comment: The RED MAFIYA reads more like an article from the Sunday newspaper supplement than a serious expose of Russian gangster activity in the U.S. Nevertheless, for those of us who know very little about the subject it's a light introduction to that particular group of criminals.
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Title: Comrade Criminal: Russia's New Mafiya by Stephen Handelman ISBN: 0300063865 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.22 |
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Title: Russian Mafia in America: Immigration, Culture, and Crime by James O. Finckenauer, Elin J. Waring ISBN: 1555535089 Publisher: Northeastern University Press Pub. Date: November, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Russian Mafia: Private Protection in a New Market Economy by Federico Varese ISBN: 019829736X Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: September, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism by Vadim Volkov ISBN: 0801487781 Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Oligarchs: Wealth & Power in the New Russia by David E. Hoffman, David Hoffman ISBN: 1586480014 Publisher: PublicAffairs Pub. Date: 19 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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