The assassination of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya has given rise to countless comments, debates and articles, the most common point of which has been to denounce, either in succession or simultaneouslyThe most common point has been to denounce a political crime, an action by the secret services, a gesture of intimidation by the mafia and, more generally, the mafia's hold over the whole of the political, economic and social life of this country.

Amalgam allows eloquent denunciations and striking feather effects, but rarely contributes to a good understanding of events. The term mafia, which has probably never been as widely used as in Russia, is particularly convenient in this respect: malleable and plastic as one pleases, it makes it possible to designate in a single word phenomena of great diversity, and dispenses the user from a precise characterization of what it designates.

In Russia, this term can be applied with varying degrees of success to four quite distinct realities:

• organized crime in the strict sense. Criminal groups have existed since the Soviet era. They prospered under Brezhnev with the complicity of local leaders (the case of Uzbekistan being the most emblematic) and under the eye of the KGB[1], but with relative discretion. Their activity centred on classic trafficking has grown exponentially and gained in visibility (confrontations between gangs) during the chaos of the 1990s-1995; [2].
• the criminalisation of legal economic activity. In the absence of land, commercial or financial law applicable to private enterprise, the use of intimidation or even violence to obtain a contractIn the absence of a land, commercial or financial law applicable to private enterprise, the use of intimidation or even violence to obtain a contract, ensure the performance of a contract, eliminate an intermediary or defraud a co-shareholder (especially if he is foreign) has become widespread [3]. In this context, the groups mentioned above can serve as service providers, but they are far from being the only ones;
• corruption. In a context of stagnating civil service salaries and exploding profits in the business world, this phenomenon has become universally widespread at all levels and in all areas of the administrative or political hierarchy (as well as the armed and security forces). It contributes to the criminogenic climate by fuelling a widespread mistrust of any form of public authority;
• the widespread diversion of public resources for private or clan purposes. This principle is practically enshrined in the constitution, since an elected president can without question have all the means normally available to him or her from the state to conduct his or her re-election campaign or to have his or her chosen successor elected. He can also use the coercive apparatus of the state to exercise private vengeance... This practice, which is also widespread at all levels, distorts the normal game of democracy and gives the term a very specific connotation for the Russian citizen.

These different phenomena can of course be combined. They all require a greater or lesser degree of participation by the political authorities and the bodies normally responsible for maintaining law and order, sometimes going all the way up to the highest level. Above all, they benefit from favourable ground inherited from the Soviet era, but their roots are much deeper in the Russian tradition of autocracy:

• the absence of independent justice, and more generally the separation of powers,
• legal norms much more concerned with social order than with the protection of the individual,
• system of internal jurisdiction for all matters relating to the armed and security forces.

From a Western point of view, the consequences are obviously negative, whether it be the discrediting of the very notion of democracy, tolerance by the whole of society of the arbitrariness of power, ofa climate of latent civil violence, and more generally the blocking, or even regression, of the evolution of society initiated, in a partially spontaneous way, during the last years of the Soviet Union[4]. 4] However, they should not be confused, either by their nature or their seriousness: if mafia-type behaviour is frequent, the idea of a mafia-criminal group holding the country in its hands is meaningless... unless we consider that starting from the Kremlin it encompasses by capillarity 90% of the political, economic and military elite.

Whatever its exact motives and perpetrators, the responsibility for the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya (the latest in a series of dozens of journalists, to mention just a few, over the last 15 years) is not clear.es), is diluted by the hatred it inspired, in particular through its involvement in Chechen affairs, to many political decision-makers, "businessmen", military leaders and major criminals. But will it ultimately be attributed to a particular member of this nebula? In this respect, the modus operandi of his assassin, who acted alone, face uncovered and on foot in the middle of Moscow, leaves little doubt about his feeling of impunity: practically none of the comparable cases has ever been elucidated .

1] Internal security services under the Soviet Union, forerunner of the present FSB.

2] There does not seem to be a Sicilian "Coupole" type coordinating body, which is quite understandable given Russia's geographical specificity.

3] This is one of the explanations for the low level of foreign direct investment in Russia.

4] In the 1990s, Russians considered freedom of expression as one of the main achievements of perestroika, but were pessimistic about its sustainability....