Samenvatting

Traditionally there was a lot of admiration in Russia for the social bandits in the sixteenth en seventeenth centuries. Later, under the Soviets, other brave political bandits, better known as revolutionaries, were praised. In addition, there were vory v zakone and the prisoners of Gulag. In this article the link between politics and crime in the Soviet and post-Soviet Russia is analyzed. In order to understand the emergence of old and new criminals it is necessary to follow the historical development of this interrelationship.