Gary T. Dempsey and Aaron Lukas

Gary T. Dempsey and Aaron Lukas are policy analysts at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. In the following viewpoint, they assert that Russia’s organized crime epidemic does not represent an extreme form of capitalism as claimed by some observers, but is instead a direct legacy of decades of Communist government under the former Soviet Union. Many members of Russia’s criminal class, they assert, are current or former government officials that have used their privileged positions to their advantage both before and after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Dempsey and Lukas assert that corruption and crime can be best fought by increased privatization, tax relief, and reducing the government’s role in...