The Georgian Mafia

Author(s): Gavin Slade
Editor(s): Lili Di Puppo, Iris Kempe, Matthias Neumann, Robert Orttung, Jeronim Perovic
Series: Caucasus Analytical Digest (CAD)
Issue: 9
Pages: 5-8
Publisher(s): Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich; Jefferson Institute, Washington D.C.; Heinrich Böll Foundation, Tbilisi; Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen
Publication Year: 2009

Amongst post-Soviet countries, Georgia has a reputation as a stronghold for a certain type of criminal, known in Georgian as kanoneri qurdebi (literally translated as thieves-in-law meaning thieves living by their own code). These figures have sometimes been mythologized as steel men alloying elements of the harsh penal subculture of the Soviet Gulag with the ancient cultural values of the Georgian abrag, the honest, honorable outlaw living by the informal laws of the mountains. Trying to move past the romanticized image, this article goes into some detail about what the qurdebi are, what they do and how they have changed in Georgia in the 1990s up to the Rose Revolution.

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