Therefore, to make the theoretical assumption that criminal groups do something other than commit crimes, that law enforcement agencies do something other than enforce laws, and that there is no hierarchy among coercive agencies is to posit a Hobbesian state of nature rather than a Commonwealth, the state. In 1995, I was not wholly unjustified in positing the state of nature and its logic as the starting point for sociological research, even though my passport certified that I was a citizen of the Russian state. At that time, those who were supposed to enforce the law—employees of the justice and security systems—themselves acted informally as private enforcers or joined private protection companies. They were as numerous among violent entrepreneurs as their alleged adversaries from racketeering gangs.
…
I suggest that a conscious project of state building, which has become increasingly important in Russia since the end of 1998, was preceded by a consolidation of violence-managing agencies, the capitalization of their incomes, and a partial delegation of their enforcement capacity to state agencies.
—Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism, (London: Cornell University Press, 2002), xi-xiii.
„Moscow is a fairly safe city, provided you’re not an opposition parliamentarian“