The Market of Violence: Disabled Soviet Afghan War Veterans and Organized Crime in 1990s Russia

This paper explores how disabled veterans of the Soviet Afghan War came to be major players in the world of organized crime in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Fueled by bitterness over austerity and a lack of societal recognition, veterans’ groups attempted to fill the gap created by vanished Soviet welfare programs by turning to the free market to sell violence—an increasingly valuable commodity in the absence of a state with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Using profits from contract murder and money laundering, disabled veterans bought wheelchairs, paid pensions, and built monuments.