"On Christmas Day, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev delivered a ten-minute televised speech announcing his resignation as Soviet president. Moments later, with little pomp and less circumstance, the red flag was lowered from its floodlit perch atop the Kremlin, and the Soviet Union ceases to exist. Into the vacuum--before a new democracy has time to put down roots--surged the Russian mafia, supplying what the new state could not: krysha, or "roof"--protection...