Violent entrepreneurship in post-communist Russia

This article is about the role of organised violence in the process of market building and state building in Russia. But instead of offering yet another review of the notorious Russian organised crime I will analyse institutions and practices of violent entrepreneurship, criminal as well as legal. Violent entrepreneurship can be defined as a set of organisational decisions and action strategies enabling the conversion of organised force (or organised violence) into money or other market resources on a permanent basis. If consumer goods, for example, constitute the major resource for trade entrepreneurship, money for financial entrepreneurship, information and knowledge for informational entrepreneurship, and so forth, violent entrepreneurship is constituted by socially organised violence, real or potential. Violent enterpreneurship, however, is different in one important respect: throughout modern history, organised violence, unlike other resources, has been managed and controlled by the state alone, that is by public rather than private authority and used for public rather than private ends. That is why with the rise of modern centralised states this key resource has been largely excluded from the sphere of private entrepreneurship. In today's Russia it is back again: I intend to demonstrate that what from the macro perspective appears as the crisis of the state takes in everyday practice the form of violent entrepreneurship.