@ThePolakVet, there are actually two Russian crime groups. The Vory V Zakone are your hardcore gangsters that live by the thiefs code, and go by the tattoos that one obtains in prison. The other group is the younger generation that get inked up with no regard as to what the tattoos really means or symbolizes, or older members that never joined the vory, but are highly intelligent to pull off sophisticated crimes, or bodybuilders that have become enforcers for crime groups.
Vory V Zakone are not considered as a crime group, it's a lifestyle that people lead by living by the "right ideas" or as you call them in Russian - ponyatiya. If you consider it, Vory V Zakone started as a prison gang very long time ago. Nowdays it's influence goes also outside of prisons. The main ideology of the group is to live the life of a criminal, a code that you must follow by when you live in prison. That's why in our ex-USSR prisons we don't have prison gangs like for example there are in US.
The main tasks for Vory V Zakone in prisons where to keep the prison life in order, to collect the obshak and to put resistance to the government. These are usually very smart men and they're highly respected.
Nowdays the influence of Vory V Zakone is on the outside also. Usually Vory lead crime groups or look over regions of influence. Such as in Latvia there was Vyacheslav "Sliva" Shestakov who got recently deported and now there's Vyacheslav Vasiliev who looks over the Baltic Region and crime groups operating here. They oftenly are judges on conflicts between groups also. But nowdays it's also that many people buy the status of Vor V Zakone, those are called "apelsini" by those Thieves in Law who were crowned originally. Also if a Vor V Zakone gets crowned in prison, he has more respect.
About the younger generation which you meant. These are bandits, mobsters and the so called mafia. Not every group of these live by ponyatiya. In the 90's yes, they were mostly sportsmen like boxers and bodybuilders most oftenly. There are ex-cops or ex-military people in these groups, people who wouldn't be with the Vory V Zakone. These are the people who don't think about laws, but about how to make money. Each group differs from another. Some is all intelligent and does business smooth, others are meatheads and destroy anything in their way.
First lets address the 800 pound gorilla in the room when it comes to the Russian mob; It’s actually the Russian Jewish/Lithuanian mob. Virtually the entire leadership of the Russian factions in the Midwest are Jewish/Lithuanian, or both.
No, we Russians are not all Jews or Lithuanians. However, there are a lot of Russian Jews in USA, as they were the ones who emigrated from the USSR first in the 1970's, then later all the Russians could go.
