"Translator’s note: AUE is a Russian prison-criminal slang acronym associated with the idea that “the prisoner/criminal code is united.” It refers to a subculture that glorifies prison rules, criminal brotherhood, and hostility toward law enforcement."

Russia, you've gone AUE!

The news about nearly four hundred kilograms of Argentine cocaine being delivered to Russia by planes from the government aviation squadron didn't surprise me at all. What's there to be surprised about? Perhaps the fact that the setting is Argentina, a country not renowned for cocaine production and not known for particularly warm relations with Russia. Can you imagine what's happening in Russian embassies in Venezuela or Colombia now?

And the fact that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs denies everything, blaming the CIA and the fifth column—well, at least they're trying to justify themselves somehow; they could have just laughed it off and continued with their business—after all, that's what the President always does, for example. And the army too. But for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it's probably just inertia, a relic—remember, in Soviet times, diplomats were considered carriers of a special refined culture, experts in etiquette, extremely cultured people? Now, with Maria Zakharova and her "Morons, ***," it's hard to believe. Something seems to have happened to them.

The Argentine news fits logically and naturally into the image of Russia that emerges from the Panama Papers, from news in Spain and the USA, where efforts are being made to uproot the entrenched Russian mafia, openly including half of our establishment—senators, deputies, close acquaintances of the state's top officials. News about Rosgvardia fighters guarding criminal authorities, prosecutors covering casinos, their families creating joint businesses with thugs from Kushchyovka, deputy heads of the Investigative Committee cooperating with Shakro Molodoy, and the head of the Investigative Committee himself taking the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta to the woods.

And they fit well with the image of our country created by the TV shows on Channel One and others—where people are rude on live broadcasts, punch faces, and talk according to criminal codes. The image of Russia as it has become by Vladimir Putin's fifth term.

In the wild nineties, during the days of rampant banditry, there was an urban legend circulating among the people about a secret organization called "White Arrow": retired special service officers, tired of the law's impotence against organized crime, supposedly decided to fight crime by its own methods and declared an unofficial war for the complete destruction of the mafia.

There was, therefore, a demand among the population for people's avengers, incorruptible and unrestrained by the law, who would find a way to deal with the lawless—in a spirit as understandable as that of SMERSH. And when the quiet heirs of SMERSH began to regain power, the population liked it because where there's SMERSH, there's order, and the population had longed for order.

By the eighties, SMERSH had somewhat gotten out of the habit of mass killings, and its fighters started to resemble bureaucrats more: take our current elite—no heroic faces, all bureaucratic. But the new opportunities that wild capitalism offered to the old SMERSH were dizzying. SMERSH shook the dandruff off its shoulders, dressed up, and stood tall. And it began to restore order, which everyone eagerly awaited.

The feral organized crime was brought to heel: the mythical "White Arrow" came to power, and the legend began to realize itself. The mafia was quickly shown its place: not at the top of the food chain, but closer to the middle. But to eradicate it completely seemed too wasteful to the new state leadership. Adolescence spent on streets with broken streetlights and working in the St. Petersburg mayor's office during the night governorship of Vladimir Kumarin, I think, taught the new state leadership to see organized crime not so much as an enemy and competitor, but as a useful tool and resource.

Instead of waging a war of annihilation against the mafia, the authorities turned it into one of their departments—just like the church or the press. Criminal authorities who agreed to cooperate with the state and integrate into power (which required them to deviate from the thieves' code) received political representation and immunity (deputy mandates), plus the opportunity to legalize their business. The authorities gained effective control over shadow Russia, where, as in sunny midday Russia, everything could now be resolved with a phone call.

Being outside the law, organized crime is also outside its brackets. The formal authority, forced to develop within the tight box of the Constitution, laws, and the Criminal Code, suffered from eternal orthopedic problems and endlessly envied the informal authority with its freedom; the concepts seemed to it a much more convenient and fair system of coordinates than legislation. And for many, more familiar.

The mafia lifestyle entered Russian political culture precisely under Putin; it was glamorous and cool, it seduced and infected more and more representatives of the establishment. It was with him that the mafia discourse came. But it would be a mistake to present it as merely the decay of the elite. The fact is that organized crime in Russia possesses something incomparably more important than the cinematic romantic flair or the bonuses of permissiveness. It is the bearer of its own strong and vibrant culture—in the anthropological and civilizational sense.

Russian crime has its own caste structure, its own language (fenya), its own mythology with a comprehensive worldview, its own art (blatnyak), its own tradition (rooted in Tsarist Russia), its own ethics (concepts), and its own aesthetics. Despite its medieval nature, or perhaps because of it, the criminal political and social culture is much more suited to many regions of the Russian Federation and other former USSR republics. It more accurately describes reality and better helps to survive in it, and therefore, continues to shape it.

Initially, the incubators of this culture and its spreaders were prisons and zones; however, law enforcement officers, demoralized by the collapse of the Soviet ideological system, had nothing to counter with—and the criminal culture infected them first. Then the virus penetrated the special services, and then it affected all state institutions. Corruption, which seemed to the new leadership a much more effective way to ensure loyalty and manageability of the bureaucracy, exists in the criminal, underworld dimension. And all real—not ceremonial—politics was thus also transferred to the criminal dimension.

Having absorbed the mafia, the state thought to digest it, assign it the functions of a special representative for delicate assignments; however, the process moves in both directions, and the mafia with its criminal culture, merging with law enforcement agencies, parliamentarians, and artists, is embedding itself in the elite forever. And if anyone thought that after decades the former bootleggers would civilize, as happened, say, in the USA—then no. The culture of the criminal underground in our country turned out to be more powerful and lively than the culture of bureaucratic mainstream. Once, only Putin was taking people out in the toilet, but now the whole state is doing it, including the once extremely formal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the pompous television, and the Church resurrected from the ashes of the KGB's Fifth Directorate. Criminal culture corroded formal culture from within as criminal power corroded ordinary power. Finally, power and the underworld began to speak the same language—and both like it. When news reaches us from distant Transbaikalia about the rampant criminal-social movement "A.U.E." there, the authorities promise to sort it out. But there's nothing to sort out, it's all clear: "A.U.E." is simply the Red Guards of our own cultural revolution.

"A.U.E." supposedly means "The Prisoners' Code is Unified," but you can clearly hear the intonation of another, more understandable word—which precisely describes the prerogatives of those who have already come to power and the dream of those who are only striving for power. And it is "A.U.E." that should be inscribed on the coat of arms of the beautiful new Russia of Putin's fifth term.