“I hate what my dad was doing but I would never be as cool as him”. Criminal Governance n Georgia in Narratives of Mafia Family Members

• In Event: Rethinking Organized Crime: Production, Trade and Governance

Abstract

This paper examines criminal governance in the South Caucasian country of Georgia. After gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, amidst state collapse, economic turmoil, and two civil wars, the Georgian criminal fraternity of thieves-in-law (kanonieri qurdebi) established themselves as an alternative governing force, enforcing order where official institutions had failed and playing a crucial role in shaping the country’s economy, security agencies, and political landscape. Their Code of Conduct positioned them as impartial arbitrators, supposedly bound by strict rules of honor. It also allowed them to gain a prominent role in society as figures who resolved conflicts and addressed citizens' grievances.

This paper examines how this form of criminal governance is remembered, legitimized, and contested in contemporary Georgia, drawing on field research in Georgia and oral interviews with an extremely hard-to-reach population—the family members of thieves-in-law. Widows, sons, and daughters of 1990s kanonieri qurdebi reflect on them not only as family members—demanding partners, (un)faithful husbands, and loving fathers—but also as key power brokers in a lawless state. Their accounts reveal how the moral authority and enforcement mechanisms of the criminal fraternity influenced local governance. In family memory, Georgia of the 1990s is portrayed as a place of endless violence and injustice, where thieves-in-law were the only just and incorruptible rulers. Even today, they evoke respect, reverence, and romanticization in Georgian society.

Author

• Elena Racheva, University of Oxford