The Russian mafia (Russian: ру́сская ма́фия rússkaya máfiya [ˈruskəjə ˈmafʲɪjə] or росси́йская ма́фия rossíyskaya máfiya [rɐˈsʲijskəjə ˈmafʲɪjə]), otherwise referred to as Bratva (братва́ bratvá [brɐtˈva], lit. 'brotherhood'), is a collective of various organized crime related elements originating in the former Soviet Union (FSU). Any of the mafia's groups may be referred to as an "Organized Criminal Group" (OPG). This is sometimes modified to include a specific name, such as the Orekhovskaya OPG. The "P" in the initialism comes from the Russian word for criminal: prestupnaya. Sometimes, the Russian word is dropped in favour of a full translation, and OCG is used instead of OPG.
Today's Russian organized crime can be traced back to the Russian Empire, but it was not until after the establishment of the Soviet Union that certain vory v zakone (lit. 'thieves-in-law') emerged as the leaders of prison groups throughout forced labour camps with a generally well-defined code of honour. In the aftermath of World War II in 1945, the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, more gangs emerged in a flourishing black market that exploited the unstable governments of the FSU. American attorney Louis Freeh, who headed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) between 1993 and 2001, said that the Russian mafia posed the greatest threat to the United States in the mid-1990s.
In 2012, there were as many as 6,000 groups, with more than 200 of them having a global reach. Criminals of these various groups are either former prison members, corrupt officials and business leaders, people with ethnic ties, or people from the same region with shared criminal experiences and leaders. In December 2009, Timur Lakhonin, the head of the National Central Bureau of Interpol within Russia, stated "Certainly, there is crime involving our former compatriots abroad, but there is no data suggesting that an organized structure of criminal groups comprising former Russians exists abroad" on the topic of international Russian criminal gangs. In August 2010, Alain Bauer, a criminologist from France, said that the Russian mafia "is one of the best structured criminal organizations in Europe, with a quasi-military operation" in their international activities.
The Russian mafia is similar to the Italian crime groups in many ways, in that the groups' organizations and structures follow a similar model. The two groups also share a similar portfolio of criminal activity. The highly publicized Sicilian Mafia is believed to have inspired early criminal groups in Russia to form mafia-like organizations, eventually spawning their own version. The Russian mafia, however, differed from the Sicilians due to their environment. The level of political corruption and arms sales in post-Soviet Russia allowed for their massive expansion, as well as the incorporation of many government officials into the crime syndicates. Russian mafia groups have also been involved in uranium trading, stolen from the Soviet nuclear program, and human trafficking, among other serious activities.
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