Entering the shady world of what he calls "violent entrepreneurship," Vadim Volkov explores the economic uses of violence and coercion in Russia in the 1990s. Violence has played, he shows, a crucial role in creating the institutions of a new market economy. The core of his work is competition among so-called violence-managing agencies criminal groups, private security services, private protection companies, and informal protective agencies associated with the state which multiplied with the liberal reforms of the early 1990s. This competition provides an unusual window on the dynamics of...

Entering the shady world of what he calls "violent entrepreneurship," Vadim Volkov explores the economic uses of violence and coercion in Russia in the 1990s. Violence has played, he shows, a crucial role in creating the institutions of a new market economy. The core of his work is competition among so-called violence-managing agencies criminal groups, private security services, private protection companies, and informal protective agencies associated with the state which multiplied with the liberal reforms of the early 1990s. This competition provides an unusual window on the dynamics of...