This refers to the area of illicit enterprise. This aspect has been defined by Dwight C. Smith in The Mafia Mystique as". the extension of legitimate market activities into the illegitimate demand/supply market. Illicit enterprises satisfy either legitimate or illegitimate demands, but in both cases they do so illegally." (Handbook of Organized Crime in the United States 246).

             2. Different ethnic forms of organized crime in the United States. .

             2.1. Russian organized crime .

             One of the most often referred to differentiating characteristics of the Russian form of organized crime in the United States is the importation of a particular criminal ethos and methods from the Soviet Union. While this aspect is common to some extent in many of the different ethnic categories of organized crime, yet it seems to be a particularly strong element in the Russian brand of crime in America. This is mainly due to the collapse of the Russian economy and social structure which engendered a sophisticated strain of criminal entrepreneurship. "Criminal life in the former Soviet Union equipped many Russian gangsters with skills perfectly suited to white-collar crime in the United States." (Kelly 268) Commentators argue that Russian society, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, was to prove to be an ideal breeding ground for Russian criminal activity which was imported into the Unites States. In post-communist Russian citizens were forced to,.

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             negotiate and connive their way through the vast Communist bureaucracy. Papers were needed to work, to travel, to buy certain consumer goods, to get medical care, to buy a car, to get an apartment. In order to survive, ordinary citizens had to act like criminals; they had to master the intricacies of the corrupt state bureaucracy, learn how to bribe officials, and develop skills in forging and counterfeiting documents. (Kelly 268) .

             These "skills" have had a profound effect on the sophistication of the Russian brand of crime in America.