Re: Bob The Robber 4 Russia
Joao Charlesbois
As the police and court system were re-established in the Soviet Union shortly after the 1917 revolution, the NKVD secret police nearly exterminated the criminal underworld completely. Under Stalin, the forced labor camps overflowed with political prisoners and criminals, and a new organized group of top criminals arose, the vory v zakone, or "thieves in law."[1]
The "thieves in law" formed as a society for ruling the criminal underworld within the prison camps, "who govern the dark gaps in Soviet life beyond the reach of the KGB."[1] They adopted a system of collective responsibility, and swore to a code of "complete submission to the laws of criminal life, including obligations to support the criminal ideal, and rejection of labor and political activities."[3]
For example, while incarcerated, a Vor must refuse all work, and is not allowed to assist the warden/correction officers in any way. The thieves' code states: "Your own prison you shall not make." If an inmate walks past a guard, and the guard asks him to ring the dinner bell, the convict must refuse or he will be judged by his fellow inmates and found guilty of assisting his jailers. The Vory organized their own courts and held trials governed by the code of 'thieves' honor and tradition'.[1]
Acceptance into the group is often marked by specific tattoos, allowing all members of the criminal world to instantly recognize a "thief in law". Most prison inmates are tattooed (by other inmates) to indicate their rank within the criminal world, noteworthy criminal accomplishments and places of former incarceration. For example, a tattoo of one cat indicates that the criminal robs alone while multiple cats indicate that he has partners during robberies. Reportedly, "while the Communist Party had a steadfast grip on government and society, the Vory had something of a monopoly on crime."[1]
After the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the vory assumed a leading role within the Russian criminal hierarchy (see Russian mafia). The group was able to "infiltrate the top political and economic strata while taking command of the burgeoning crime network that spread murderously through the post-Soviet countries."[1] Thieves In Law are given the title by other vory and in order to be accepted they must demonstrate considerable leadership skills, personal ability, intellect, charisma, along with a well-documented criminal record.[1]
Once accepted they must live according to the thieves' code. The penalty for violation of this code is often mutilation or death. Reportedly, "today the Vory have spread around the world, to Madrid, Berlin, and New York" and are "involved in everything from petty theft to billion-dollar money-laundering while also acting as arbiters among conflicting Russian criminal factions."[1]
Reportedly, as capitalism began to take hold in Russia, an increasing number of college-educated criminals began to take over more lucrative ventures.[1] While these new criminal elements first worked with the Vory in the 1990s, in the 2000s (decade), ties to big business and government grew in importance.[1] Consequently, while the "Vory are still strong in gambling and retail trade," their importance in Russian economy and society has decreased.[1] However, since the majority of criminals eventually are arrested and incarcerated, at some point they will come in contact with the Vory who are at the top of the hierarchy of the criminal world within the penal system in Russia.
Ponyatiya (понятия, 'concepts' or 'understandings') are the rules of conduct (or even the customary laws or code of honor) among prison inmates, with Vory being respectful leaders and judges according to these rules.
Vory consider prisons their true home and have a saying, "The home for angels is heaven, and the home for a Vor is prison." According to Aleksandr Gurov, an expert on the Vory who headed the organized crime units of the Soviet Interior Ministry and the GRU, "unlike the Cosa Nostra the Vory have 'less rules, but more severe rules' [and the] members must have no ties to the government, meaning they cannot serve in the army or cooperate with officials while in prison. They must also have served several jail sentences before they can be considered. They also are not allowed to get married."[1]
Furthermore, according to Michael Schwirtz, "ethnicity has rarely determined whether someone can join the club, and today many members, even those active inside Russia, are from other post-Soviet countries such as Armenia, Georgia, and are not ethnic Russians."[1]
The Vory subculture (more exactly: the prison inmate subculture where Vory are the leaders) is well known for having symbolic tattoos.[6] The tattoos are usually done in the prison with primitive tools.
The 1907 Tiflis bank robbery, also known as the Erivansky Square expropriation,[1] was an armed robbery on 26 June 1907.mw-parser-output .citationword-wrap:break-word.mw-parser-output .citation:targetbackground-color:rgba(0,127,255,0.133)[a] in the city of Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia) in the Tiflis Governorate in the Caucasus Viceroyalty of the Russian Empire. A Bolshevik group "expropriated" a bank cash shipment to fund their revolutionary activities. The robbers attacked a bank stagecoach, and the surrounding police and soldiers, using bombs and guns while the stagecoach was transporting money through Erivansky Square (present-day Freedom Square) between the post office and the Tiflis branch of the State Bank of the Russian Empire. The attack killed forty people and injured fifty others, according to official archive documents. The robbers escaped with 241,000 rubles.[2]
The robbery was organized by a number of top-level Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Maxim Litvinov, Leonid Krasin, and Alexander Bogdanov; and executed by a party of revolutionaries led by Stalin's early associate Simon Ter-Petrosian, also known as "Kamo" and "The Caucasian Robin-Hood". Because such activities had been explicitly prohibited by the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) only weeks previously, the robbery and the killings caused outrage within the party against the Bolsheviks (a faction within the RSDLP). As a result, Lenin and Stalin tried to distance themselves from the robbery.
The events surrounding the incident and similar robberies split the Bolshevik leadership, with Lenin against Bogdanov and Krasin. Despite the success of the robbery and the large sum involved, the Bolsheviks could not use most of the large banknotes obtained from the robbery, because the police had records of the serial numbers. Lenin conceived a plan to have various individuals cash the large-value banknotes at once at various locations throughout Europe in January 1908, but this strategy failed, resulting in a number of arrests, worldwide publicity, and negative reaction from social democrats elsewhere in Europe.
Kamo was caught in Germany shortly after the robbery, but successfully avoided a criminal trial by feigning insanity for more than three years. He managed to escape from his psychiatric ward, but was recaptured two years later while planning another robbery. Kamo was then sentenced to death for his crimes including the 1907 robbery, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment; he was released after the 1917 Russian Revolution. None of the other major participants or organizers of the robbery were ever brought to trial. After Kamo's death in 1922, a monument to him was erected near Erivansky Square in Pushkin Gardens, and Kamo was buried beneath it. The monument was later removed and Kamo's remains were moved elsewhere.
The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), the predecessor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, was formed in 1898. The goal of the RSDLP was to carry out a Marxist proletarian revolution against the Russian Empire. As part of their revolutionary activity, the RSDLP and other revolutionary groups (such as anarchists and Socialist Revolutionaries) practised a range of militant operations, including "expropriations", a euphemism for armed robberies of government or private funds to support revolutionary activities.[3][4]
Despite the unified party's prohibition on separate committees, during the 5th Congress the Bolsheviks elected their own governing body, called the Bolshevik Centre, and kept it secret from the rest of the RSDLP.[5][6] The Bolshevik Centre was headed by a "Finance Group" consisting of Lenin, Leonid Krasin and Alexander Bogdanov. Among other party activities, the Bolshevik leadership had already planned a number of "expropriations" in different parts of Russia by the time of the 5th Congress and was awaiting a major robbery in Tiflis, which occurred only weeks after the 5th Congress ended.[6][8][9]
Before the 5th Congress met, high-ranking Bolsheviks held a meeting in Berlin in April 1907 to discuss staging a robbery to obtain funds to purchase arms. Attendees included Lenin, Stalin, Krasin, Bogdanov and Litvinov. The group decided that Stalin, then known by his earlier nom de guerre Koba,[b] and the Armenian Ter-Petrosian, known as Kamo, should organize a bank robbery in the city of Tiflis.[10]
The 29-year-old Stalin was living in Tiflis with his wife Ekaterina and newborn son Yakov.[11] Stalin was experienced at organizing robberies, and these exploits had helped him gain a reputation as the centre's principal financier.[1][5] Kamo, four years younger than Stalin, had a reputation for ruthlessness; later in his life he cut a man's heart from his chest.[12] At the time of the conspiracy, Kamo ran a criminal organization called "the Outfit".[13] Stalin said that Kamo was "a master of disguise",[12] and Lenin called Kamo his "Caucasian bandit".[12] Stalin and Kamo had grown up together, and Stalin had converted Kamo to Marxism.[12]
After the April meeting, Stalin and Litvinov travelled to Tiflis to inform Kamo of the plans and to organize the raid.[10][14] According to Roman Brackman's The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life, while Stalin was working with the Bolsheviks to organize criminal activities, he was also acting as an informant for the Okhrana, the Russian secret police. Brackman alleges that once the group returned to Tiflis, Stalin informed his Okhrana contact, Officer Mukhtarov, about the bank robbery plans and promised to provide the Okhrana with more information at a later time.[10] However, Geoffrey Roberts has termed Brackman's allegation as a "conspiracy theory" and has further opined that all the evidence that Brackman adduces in support of this hypothesis is circumstantial and speculative.[15]
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