The Soviet Union, also known as Soviet Russia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the USSR was a country that existed from 1922 to 1991. It encompassed present-day Russia, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Its breakup in 1991 led to the mass emigration of former Soviet citizens, which caused the rise of the Russian Mafia and Ukrainian Mafia.
History[]
The Soviet Union was founded in 1922 following the Russian Civil War, in which the communist Bolshevik party took control of the former Russian Empire. The USSR was a communist state, and people were given equal rights and equal pay, but after the ascension of dictator Joseph Stalin to power, the people suffered. He ordered them work long, hard days in factories and stole their crops, and from 1933 to 1938, he purged the country of dissidents or suspected potential threats to his power. These attacks on civil liberties led to a hatred of the USSR from the rest of the world, and after the Soviet Union occupied eastern Europe after the end of World War II, they set up several communist governments, starting the Cold War.
The Cold War delayed any chance of Russian emigration to Western countries, as they were shut off to Soviet citizens. However, the United States allowed Russian Jews to immigrate to America, as did Israel - the Russian Mafia in Israel was made up almost entirely of Soviet Jews that emigrated to find a better life without anti-Semitism. The USSR allowed organized crime to run rampant in their cities, just as long as they did not interfere with government affairs.
When the USSR fell in 1991, a mass exodus of Soviet citizens began. People from all across the USSR left for capitalist countries to have better lives, and Eastern European communities developed in London's Hammersmith, New York City's Brighton Beach, and Los Angeles' Attrium. The Russian Mafia, as well as the Ukrainian Mafia, Jewish Mob, Israeli Mafia, Georgian Mafia, Azeri Mafia, Armenian Mafia, Kazakh Bratva, and other organized crime groups from the former Soviet Union, grew rapidly in the 1990s. In present-day Russia alone, 3,000,000 people are members of the Russian Mafia.