Organized crime groups exist in many countries, but the most powerful groups are Russian and Italian mafia. There is a great difference between origins and predispositions of the Italian and Russian organized crime groups. The Russian mafia was influenced by political and economic changes, break down of the USSR and the wave of privatization. In contrast, the Italian mafia first occurred as a recognizable phenomenon toward the end of the eighteenth century throughout southern Italy.

Perhaps the best way to acquire “a feel” for it (for that is all we can hope for) is to imagine it developing as a force of reaction against the intensified abuses of a moribund feudalism. To be sure, there were many instances in which the mafia was an instrument, not against, but in the hands of, the feudal nobility. But that merely reveals something about the mutability of human phenomena and the corruptibility of human ideals (Paoli 2003, p. 133).

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Italian Mafia vs Russian Mafia: Comparison

The mafia probably had its roots in the absolute necessity of the southern Italian masses to defend their families, their honor, their source of livelihood, and their very life at a time when those who possessed secular and ecclesiastical authority were renouncing all obligations of law and order to the people while at the same time robbing them of whatever land they possessed, molesting their wives and daughters, imposing intolerable taxation, and inflicting all manner of moral as well as corporal punishments. Originally, the mafia consisted of little more than scattered little groups of peasants, often outlaws, who found in each other’s strength and resolve the basis of a new moral and social order (Paoli 2003, p. 55).

The main similarity between Russian and Italian mafia is a strict code of conduct and behavior. “There is a traditional code of conduct within this old style of organized crime in Russia called “Vory v Zakone,” or thieves in law. The members are bound by 18 codes and if they are broken, the transgression is punishable by death” (Organization and Structure n.d.). In Italy, one finds in many a village a sacra famiglia (sacred family), an organization of local young men whose express purpose is to defend the “honor and property” of the community in general and of their own families in particular.

The organization, sometimes termed Umiltà (Humility), has elaborate hierarchies of offices and functions, colorful ceremonies and rituals, and a language in which terms like “honor,” “blood,” “family,” “man,” and “wisdom” have a very special significance. So noble are the official intentions of the sacra famiglia, and so religious the members’ conception of its function within the local scheme of things, that when a new member is installed in the organization, after a full six months of being in bello (under scrutiny), the chief tells him, “From this moment on, you are not a mere member of the mob [the populace] but a man healthy, wise, and holy” (Finckenauer and Waring 2001, p. 23).

Proliferation and activities of both crime groups reveal how a corrupt individual can rise to the top of the power hierarchy and, aided by a small group of lieutenants, use the organization to commit under the protection of secrecy those very wrongs that it was supposedly established to prevent (Finckenauer and Waring 2001, p. 204).