Gilles Favarel-Garrigues publishes « Policing Economic Crime in Russia: From Soviet Planned Economy to Privatization »

Policing Economic Crime in Russia: From Soviet Planned Economy to PrivatizationPolicing Economic Crime in Russia: From Soviet Planned Economy to Privatization
Gilles Favarel-Garrigues
Columbia University Press, October 2011

Gilles Favarel-Garrigues explores the management of economic crime in Russia, from the time of Leonid Brezhnev to Boris Yeltsin, recasting the history of the « criminal problem » that has tainted Russian politics since the late 1980s. In the closing decades of the Soviet regime, shortages of goods and services precipitated a rapid increase in black market and underground practices, visible to all yet wholly illegal. Favarel-Garrigues explains why certain cases were selected for prosecution and why particular funds and manpower were deployed to combat « economic crime. » Law enforcement agencies were also charged with stemming the fallout from Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberal economic reforms. Russia’s judicial framework proved too obsolete to deal with far-reaching economic change, tempting many in law enforcement to privatize their professional know-how. Drawing on firsthand research with both criminals and policemen, Favarel-Garrigues scrupulously investigates the changing face of criminal law and its practice before and after the fall of the Soviet state. More information and reviews.

Gilles Favarel-Garrigues is a CNRS researcher at CERI, specializing in Russian law enforcement and the global drive to stop transnational crime. He serves on the editorial board of Critique Internationale, Cultures and Conflicts, and International Political Sociology, and is the coauthor of Crime and StatesSee his publications.

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