“Everyone thinks they know what organized crime is,” said guest professor Vadim Volkov. “This class is designed to provide a different angle on this phenomenon.”

The mini-course is called “Comparative Mafia” and is being offered by the Russian department from the week of Feb. 28 to March 4. Teaching the course is Volkov, an associate professor in the faculty of political science and sociology at the European University of Saint Petersburg in Russia.

He is also the author of Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism, published in 2002.

“Instead of taking for granted the legal vs. criminal, or good guy vs. bad guy, the class suggests a different approach,” said Volkov. “What does the mafia really do? The class suggests to look at it as a proxy or competitor to the state. So, in fact, the state is the major reference point in this class, not the mafia. When the state is weak, other institutions emerge.”

Volkov said he began researching the mafia because in the ’90s it was simply unavoidable. “It was just spontaneous. It was so around in everyday life [in Russia],” he stated. “They were a powerful source of influence and social change.

“In the ’90s it was nearly impossible to walk into any decent business that didn’t have ties to the mafia,” asserted Volkov. “Economically and socially speaking it is one of the new and central things to study. This perspective is critical, sociological and economic Russia in the early ’90s gives a new framework.”

This is what is unique about Volkov’s research. Most of the research about the mafia is from the perspective of criminology or legal studies. He is a sociologist, basing his work on interviews and observations.

It is this singularity that prompted the College’s Russian department to ask him to teach the mini-course. Volkov’s work was introduced to Oberlin four years ago, when he participated in a conference titled “After the Fall.” Its theme was the development of the Mafia in Russia 10 years after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

“He was doing this great work on organized crime,” said Professor Tim Scholl of the Russian department. “The thing that we found intriguing was that he organized crime from what seems like unlikely sources: veterans from the war in Afghanistan, hockey leagues, regional sports clubs. In addition to being a flashy topic it is very interesting in terms of social change.”

“The one thing that our students continue to ask for is more content dealing with current social situations. This is a perennial problem in colleges. Most of us are historians,” said Scholl.

This direct research took the form of what may seem like a scary enterprise: direct interviews with members of crime organizations. Volkov shrugged the supposed danger off.

“Our image of the mafia is the movie image,” he said. “It wasn’t easy because these people aren’t used to giving interviews to sociologists. If you’re properly introduced and not stupid, it works. I didn’t tell them I was studying mafia, but how the market economy was really working.”

According to Volkov, the real market economy of Russia was inexorably tied up with organized crime.

“Private protection and regulation of markets was the only kind available at the time,” he concluded. “The state court system did not work.

“Of course [the mafia system] was excessively violent and not as efficient as the state, but it was the only one available.”