Violent Entrepreneurs offers an engaging glimpse into the darker recesses of Russia's shadow economy.... Volkov's work is exceptionally well researched, relying on statistical data as well as surprisingly candid firsthand interviews with members of criminal groups, heads of private protection companies, active and former police employees, experts, and businesspeople to present its case.
Perspectives on Political Science
A richly documented, complex book.... Volkov establishes a critical distance from the state and its agencies, important in principle and particularly so in a period of rapid social change, with new legal codes shifting the boundaries of crime and the enforcement of public order moving, in practice, into private hands.
International Affairs
This impressive study by Russian sociologist Vadim Volkov investigates the economic and social evolution of the nascent entrepreneurial class in Russia and accounts for its disturbingly intimate liaison with violence and crime.... Volkov considers the implications of the weakened and discredited state against the background of new economic agents who, desperate to secure their property and monopoly rights in various markets, have become accustomed to the use of force.
Russian Review
This is a splendid book, a well-written and well-researched contribution to the field that deserves a wide and appreciative readership.... This excellent, literate, and insightful work is both scholarly enough to advance study of Russian criminality and 'violent capitalism' into fruitful new avenues and readable enough that it need not scare off undergraduates—and as such to be welcomed wholeheartedly.
Slavic Review
Volkov supplies the missing link between almost everything else you may read about business in post-Communist Russia and almost everything else you can read about organized crime there. He treats the two activities, business and crime, with equal respect as fields of sociological inquiry, and so arrives at the first satisfying account of how they affect each other.
New York Review of Books