vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #167 / Opinion / Reading article...

The latest apparent contract killing – the eighth in the city this year — recently prompted a discussion at the Vladivostok News. How safe, we asked ourselves, is Vladivostok?

We all know about the sensational slayings, the car bombs, the occasional grenade tossed into a hospital ward or dangled outside the apartment window of an enemy. But this discussion centered on whether the average citizen lies low enough to avoid the sometimes bloody struggles among mafiosi.

Several of us – male foreigners, with experience of no more than 1 ? years in Vladivostok – insisted that the city is fairly safe on the street level. We haven’t been robbed or assaulted, and we feel more at ease walking on dark streets in Vladivostok than we might in a bad neighborhood of an American city of a similar size. While Russia lags economically behind the West, there is an egalitarian sense to the shabbiness.

Two Russian colleagues, however, had a more mixed view. While our female deputy editor said she feels pretty safe even at night, our male translator has been assaulted twice, once on Svetlanskaya at 5 p.m.

Figures released by the Krai Internal Affairs Office press center also suggest that the picture is mixed. Crime has increased in the first quarter of 1998: 12,795 crimes were reported. Yet felonies, which make up two thirds of the crimes, have declined by 6 percent. The most serious problems are weapons and drug violations.

In the end, even if the gangsters avoid shooting the rest of us, they have the potential to ruin life in Vladivostok. Organized crime is strengthening its grip on Primorye. The police say the mob dominates in the fishing industry. And a Khabarovsky krai crime family has recently launched a war against a local mob boss who is muscling in on its turf.

The mob can have a lasting and destructive economic impact. Investors are scared off, and Vladivostok develops a reputation as a lawless city. Reporters from two of America’s largest newspapers have visited in recent months with plans to write, at least in part, about organized crime.

It doesn’t matter how many trade shows the krai administration holds or how many Black Shark helicopters are sold overseas. If Primorye can’t stamp out organized crime, Vladivostok and the rest of the krai will never develop to their full potential.