Vocabulary of Mutiny, Mafia and Misery
Players in Russia’s Prigozhin Drama Evoke Periods of Historical Turmoil
Events of June 23-24 2023, when Russian mercenary boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin carried out a short-lived mutiny against the Russian military leadership, shocked the world. Previous Natto Thoughts reporting provided context on Prigozhin and his conflicts with the Russian establishment, as well as scenarios for civil war, coups and other turmoil.
As events involving Prigozhin, Putin, and Russia’s war on Ukraine evolve quickly, many reputable analysts provide ongoing news and insights. These include, among many others, the Institute for the Study of War; Russia Matters; the Jamestown Foundation; and analyses by Mark Galeotti, Tatiana Stanovaya, and Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan.
Here Natto Team highlights some Russian terms that have frequently popped up to help comprehend the events surrounding Prigozhin’s mutiny.
Bardak (бардак), lit. “brothel,” means a mess, often in a mild sense such as a disorderly office or mental confusion. Russian business literature, for example, often has phrases like: “people with bardak on their desks are less effective at work…” (https://big-i[.]ru/others/other/p15301/). During the Prigozhin mutiny, according to Russian state media, an old man in Rostov challenged the Wagner fighters, “Are you defenders of the Fatherland or not? If you are defenders, why are you causing this bardak?”
Bezobrazie (безобразие), lit. “formlessness,” has a generally stronger meaning than “bardak,” perhaps best translated as an outrage or disgrace. For example, the headline of a 2021 article citing ballot-stuffing at local polling places said election officials “promised punishment for the bezobrazie at the St. Petersburg elections.”
Bespredel (беспредел), lit. “without limits,” is the strongest term, referring to lawlessness or an out-of-control situation. In the 1990s people used the term to refer to the unpredictable and dangerous post-Communist reality where all the rules, verities and supports of the Soviet system had given way, and where criminals stole with impunity. In recent years Russians have used the term to describe Putin’s Russia, where the increasingly arbitrary authorities recognize no legal limits to their power.
Prigozhin used two of those words in his June 23 speech announcing his “March of Justice.” Harshly criticizing Russia’s military leaders, he proclaimed, “There are 25,000 of us, and we are going to figure out why this bespredel is happening in our country.....We need to put an end to this bezobrazie.”
Criminal Jargon
Commentators describing the current disarray have also drawn on terms evoking the Eurasian criminal world that flourished in the unsettled 1990s. Natto Thoughts previously characterized current Russian internal conflicts as more characteristic of rival mafia gangs than of a state trying to carry on a war effort and the Putin system of rule as a “protection racket.” Western and Russian commentators have made similar comparisons. Russian websites such as Prime Crime glorify the mafia lifestyle and serve up vivid gossip on Eurasian mafia figures, though they are not necessarily reliable and may be unsafe to visit directly.
Razborki (разборки), from the verb meaning “sort out,” refers to a showdown, where rival gangs test their power, settle scores, punish insults, or fight over turf. Security executive Dmitri Alperovitch drew this comparison in a June 24 tweet, writing, "…this whole episode [Prigozhin’s mutiny] should be viewed through the lens of what in Russia is called ‘razborki’ - gangland warfare. Sometimes it ends in death and leadership changes and sometimes in sitdowns where both sides shake hands and agree to move on (at least for a bit)."
Ponyatiya (понятия), lit. “understandings,” can be translated as “code of the underworld.” In May 2023, Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov appealed to this unspoken code in his message to Prigozhin (https://www.youtube[.]com/watch?v=sDY56aPDVlI) trying to convince him not to act on his threat to withdraw from Bakhmut, as NattoThoughts described previously. Kadyrov said, “You always told me you live by manly rules (мужским правилам). Therefore I tell you, according to ponyatiya: you need to do this, that, and the other thing.”
Older Historical Parallels: Civil War and Time of Troubles
Russians commenting on events surrounding the Prigozhin mutiny have evoked other periods of Russian historical crisis. NattoThoughts has previously discussed some of these traumatic memories in the Russian psyche:
Smuta (смута), a term that broadly refers to unrest but specifically evokes the Time of Troubles (смутное время, pronounced “smutnoye vremya”), the 17th century interregnum marked by civil strife, famine, imposters, and foreign intervention. In his speech on June 24 Putin warned, “Any internal smuta is a mortal threat to our statehood. Our actions will be tough,” and on June 27 he congratulated the Russian military for stopping “smuta, which would have led to chaos.” The patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church likewise warned against new smuta, while an anti-Putin Russian gleefully said, “A new smutnoye vremya has arrived.” Historian Vladislav Zubok expanded on this parallel in a 28 June article entitled “Russia’s New Time of Troubles: It’s Not 1917 in Moscow—It’s 1604.”
Russian Civil War. As Natto Team described in “Russia After Putin,” the Russian Civil War saw brutal combat among Bolsheviks, monarchists, minority nationalists and peasant anarchists; anti-Jewish pogroms; foreign intervention; atrocities; and famine. In March 2023, in an allegedly leaked phone call, a Russian businessman expressed fear that if Putin fell, “They’ll start coming: Kadyrovites, Prigozhinites, oprichniki [referring to the brutal personal militia of 16th-century Tsar Ivan the Terrible]. It will be Makhnovshchina [referring to a Ukrainian peasant uprising during the Russian Civil War]. They’ll be swinging daggers, sledgehammers...” On June 24, at the height of the Prigozhin mutiny, Putin warned against a repeat of the civil war that followed the 1917 Revolution in Russia: “Intrigues, quarrels, politicking behind the back of the army and the people turned into the greatest upheaval, the destruction of the army and the collapse of the state, the loss of vast territories,” he said. “In the end was the tragedy of civil war.” In his June 27 speech congratulating soldiers for stopping the smuta. Putin added, “In effect, you prevented a civil war.”
In particular, several commentators note that the Prigozhin drama resembles one incident from 1917: the Kornilov mutiny. After the fall of the Russian tsar, a moderate Provisional Government tried to maintain Russia’s war effort against Germany and Austria, even as it uneasily shared “dual power” (двоевластие) with grassroots councils (soviets) of workers, peasants and soldiers. After chaotic protests, one of Russia’s generals, Lavr Kornilov, marched on the capital to restore order. The Provisional Government reluctantly called on the soviets to resist Kornilov. Their success strengthened the power of the radical Bolshevik Party within the soviets, allowing the Bolsheviks to seize power two months later. This historical parallel brings up uncomfortable questions about how the end of Prigozhin’s mutiny could unleash more malign forces in the future.
One of Russia’s regional governors, denouncing Prigozhin’s mutiny, evoked these concepts, writing, “Any dual power, rebellion, or bardak in our country is inevitably pregnant with chaos, with terrible consequences, great bloodshed, and the destruction [of Russia].”
Speaking of Eurasian Mafia Culture
The gangster culture of the former Soviet Union retains a worldwide allure, its hold in the global imagination fed by movies, TV shows and video games. As one example, Natto Team observed this advertising poster for a hair stylist in Normandy, France in June.
Street Advertisement Seen in Normandy, France, June 14, 2023 (Source: Natto Team)
The model’s hand shows tattoos that resemble those worn by prisoners and criminals in the former Soviet realm. Since the Soviet era, such tattoos have conveyed messages about the criminal’s history, crimes and worldview. Although the tattooed mafia thug, adhering to the underworld code of honor, is no longer the current embodiment of Russian crime—as analyst Mark Galeotti has noted in his seminal book The Vory —nevertheless these images and other elements of criminal culture continue to resonate in Russia and around the world, symbolizing toughness and ruthlessness.