In this new world no one knew quite how to behave: all the old Soviet role models had been made redundant, and the “West” was just a story far away. But the gangsters had their own prison code, which had survived perestroika. And this made the gangsters more than just feared bullies. They were the only people in this lost, new Russia who knew who on earth they were and what they stood for. And now in the twenty-first century, although many gangsters were out of a job, their way of behaving has become ubiquitous.
