That decade saw the emergence of a tradition of monumental memorialisation, as fallen gangsters were buried with full Godfather-style pomp, with black limousines threading through paths lined with white carnations and tombs marked with huge headstones. He probably ended up as a casualty of the gang wars of the 1990s, fought out with car bombs, drive-by shootings and knives in the night. I never found out what happened to Volodya. Some were bodyguards, some were runners, some were leg-breakers and some – such as Volodya – were killers. As it rose, it was gathering a new generation of recruits, including damaged and disillusioned veterans of the USSR’s last war. It all made sense, though, when I later learned that he had become what was known in Russian crime circles as a “torpedo” – a hitman.Īs the values and structures of Soviet life crumbled and fell, organised crime was emerging from the ruins, no longer subservient to the corrupt Communist party bosses and the black-market millionaires. He always had money to burn, at a time when most were eking out the most marginal of lives, often living with their parents and juggling multiple jobs. The other afgantsy I knew tolerated Volodya, but never seemed comfortable with him, nor with talking about him. Wiry, intense and morose, he had a brittle and dangerous quality that, on the whole, I would have crossed the road to avoid. One of the men I got to know during this time was named Volodya. Some of these young men collaterally damaged by the war had become adrenaline junkies, or just intolerant of the conventions of everyday life. But then there were those who could not or would not move on. The nightmares were less frequent, the memories less vivid. A year later, though, most had done what people usually do in such circumstances: they had adapted, they had coped. Most came back raw, shocked and angry, either bursting with tales of horror and blunder, or spikily or numbly withdrawn.

When I could, I would meet these afgantsy shortly after they got home, and then again a year into civilian life, to see how they were adjusting. While carrying out research for my doctorate on the impact of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, I was interviewing Russian veterans of that brutal conflict. The system was sliding towards shabby oblivion, even if no one knew at the time how soon the end would come. I was in Moscow in 1988, during the final years of the Soviet Union.

Russian Prison Mafia