The Necessity of Gangster Capitalism: Primitive Accumulation in Russia and China
February 1, 2000
The Russian bank laundering scandal in the newspapers last fall is only the latest installment in the ongoing saga of corruption coming out of the former Soviet Union. The more important question is: where did they get the money in the first place? How, for example, did the former Premier of the Ukraine manage to buy a seven million dollar mansion in Marin County, California, on his official salary of a few thou- sand dollars a year? The answer is only too apparent: Moscow's gangster rule has become so well known that the term "Mafia" has lost its exclusively Italian connotation. China is not much better
�