Thread by @TotallyNotARus5

OK I said I’d do this last week, don’t want to be a liar, so here goes:
Thread #1 (of several) about the early Brighton Beach “Russian Mafia” in the US

These threads will be sourced from a number of places, but this first one in particular will lean heavily on “Red Mafiya” by Robert I. Friedman (1950-2002), a reporter for the Village Voice who was known for writing a none-too flattering biography of JDL leader Rabbi Meir Kahane

Disclaimer:
Gangsters are notoriously unreliable narrators, and law enforcement accounts are often biased and underinformed.
This is more of an attempt to gleam the formation of larger criminal and parapolitical networks that remain relevant to this day.
So, without further ado…

The first wave of Soviet gangsters entered the US on the heels of the Jackson-Vanick Amendment (precursor of the Magnitsky Act), which was passed in 1974, in large part as an attempt to buttress Rep. Henry “Scoop” Jackson’s 1976 presidential run

Without getting too much into the weeds about the bill itself, it ultimately denied Most-Favored-Nation status to Soviet Bloc countries that restricted Jewish emigration to the US (Yasha Levine’s “Immigrants as a Weapon” has some great context on this)
yasha.substack.com

Most of this ensuing first emigration wave settled in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn and quickly transformed it into somewhat of an Americanized version of the port city of Odessa, where many of them originally hailed from

Now while this diplomatic concession somewhat hurt the USSR’s prestige, the KGB quickly decided to salvage some lemonade from the lemons it got and opted to do some house cleaning in the Gulags by offloading a number of hardened Soviet Jewish criminals onto the Western world

If this sounds familiar to anyone, it might be because Fidel Castro pulled the same trick with the Mariel boatlift in 1980, as seen in Scarface

And this is where we meet the main character of this first thread:
Evsei “Leningraskiy” Agron

Agron was born in Leningrad in 1932, and grew up during the Leningrad blockade of WWII. A few years later, he was sent off to a juvenile reform camp. And a few years after that, he had graduated to the Gulag, where he was eventually crowned as a “Vor v Zakonye,” or Thief-in-Law

There’s some controversy as to when the Vor “Bratva” formed, but the consensus points to it predating the USSR. Inside the Soviet prison system, they were the ultimate criminal authorities, identified by elaborate and precise tattoos, which applied to the outside world as well

Vors were considered untouchable by non-Vors, and were tasked with adjudicating disputes amongst other criminals, where their word was law. Their many privileges however, were contingent on following a strict code, which some had a harder time following than others

“Some” in this case included Agron, who had first moved to Hamburg where he ran a gambling and prostitution ring, and was allegedly chased out and “de-crowned” by fellow Vors for breaching the rules, namely welshing on a gambling debt

In 1975, he arrived in New York and quickly established himself as the foremost criminal authority in Little Odessa, using his possibly-revoked Vor title to great effect. He set up shop at the El Caribe Country Club and was soon running the top gang in the neighborhood

This was no mean feat, since there was virtually no criminal hierarchy amongst Eastern Bloc criminals at the time. In Friedman’s words:

Agron’s “Brigada” wasn’t burdened with too much sophistication in its early days. This was in large part due to the man himself being a ruthless brute who was known for walking around with a cattle prod that he used to torture extortion victims as though it were a walking stick

Crude shakedown rackets required vicious enforcers, such as this gentleman for example:

Others that quickly joined up were the Nayfeld brothers, Boris (“Biba”) and Benjamin. Boris will figure prominently in future threads, but for now a brief intro (Boris pictured):

Boris started gave legitimate work in the US a quick shot in the dark, ultimately deciding that painting houses and driving taxis wasn’t for him, and embarked on a career of small-time stick-ups and shakedowns until Agron took him under his wing. In his own words:

Another gangster who would briefly join Agron’s gang (and feature prominently later) was Monya “Mendel” Elson. His trek from Kishinev (now the capital of Moldova) to the US is a good illustration of how early Soviet global criminal networks were formed:

Monya was definitely one of the most widely feared gangsters of his day, who would occasionally go on murderous robbery rampages with his wife. From Friedman’s account of interviewing him at the Manhattan Correctional Center:

Trigger-happy as he was, Monya was mainly concerned with money. After his short-lived (and relatively unprofitable) stint in Agron’s gang, he teamed up with fellow criminal Yuri Brokhin and the two of them took on Manhattan’s diamond district:

Even though he was making money hand over fist, it was still not enough for Monya. In 1984 he personally traveled to South America to set up drug deals in Europe and Israel, where he was arrested and jail on drug trafficking charges. More on Monya later

Another member of Agron’s gang who will be prominently featured in future threads is Marat Balagula. Unlike thuggish types such as Nayfeld and Puzyretsky, Balagula was an educated (and corrupt) Communist Party functionary who skillfully leveraged his position in the black market:

Balagula emigrated to the USA in 1977, and like Nayfeld tried his hand at legitimate employment before going to work for Agron, who recognized his business acumen and made him his top advisor:

Balagula’s stock rose quickly, as he helped Agron reluctantly branch out into white collar rackets, and by 1980 he owned the top Russian mob hangout in Brighton Beach at the time—the Odessa Restaurant:

The Odessa also became the seat of the American version of the Soviet “People’s Court,” where criminals and citizens brought disputes they didn’t want the authorities to handle in front of a council of Vors, or ranking criminal authorities if no Vors were available:

Now, even though this rounds up the Soviet-born members of Agron’s entourage of note, there are two more key people to look at who had a big hand in entrenching his organization in Brooklyn:
Murray Wilson (L), and Rabbi Ronald Greenwald (R)

Murray Wilson was the cousin of Marvin Josephson (founder of ICM) and is the man who brought Agron together with the Genovese crime family (one of the 5 Italian mob families of NYC), under the aegis of his patron and then-Genovese underboss Venero “Benny Eggs” Mangano:

Wilson was active in Jewish and Zionist causes, the former of which included resettling Soviet Jews in the US, and quickly spotted the newly arrived talent pool (more on Wilson later):

However important Wilson’s Italian connections were, Rabbi Ronald Greenwald’s were arguably more so. Greenwald first came to prominence as part of the Nixon re-election campaign, and other shenanigans aside kindly note the letter from Tricky Dick himself:

Greenwald claims to have met Agron in West Berlin under strange circumstances, and even as innocent as he tries to make himself out to be, the relationship between the pair illustrated below is quite telling:

Oh yeah, and he was also a high-profile international negotiator and spy trader with CIA, Mossad, and KGB ties who consistently lobbied to have convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard released, so there’s that (more on him later, needless to say):

His ties to Wilson and Greenwald even led Agron and his crew to participate in defrauding the Dunes Hotel in Vegas, owned by Jimmy Hoffa’s attorney Morris Shenker, alleged mastermind of the scheme:

And as Agron’s criminal career evolved from small-time brutish extortionist to participant in the Las Vegas mob skim, so did the target on his back. In 1984, he was shot twice in the face and managed to survive:

As an aside, Goldberg— head of the rival gang suspected in organizing the hit—was romantically involved with Tonia Biggs, daughter of Bob Guccione, founder of Penthouse magazine:

The situation boiled over a few months later, when Agron summoned Goldberg and his gang and was left disappointed when he was unable to recognize the shoes the shooter was wearing on the feet of anyone in attendance:

Anywho, that was the last of Agron’s luck. On May 4th, 1985, the mob boss was waiting for the elevator in his building, when a man wearing sunglasses and a tracksuit (because obviously) shot him twice in the head

Given “Don Leningradskiy’s” penchant for torturing his victims and enemies with a cattle prod and trying to muscle in on every bit of criminal activity he laid his eyes on, the list of suspects was quite long. The murder remains unsolved, but one suspect stands out a tad more…

Anyway, this is it for part one, way longer than I expected it to be, but feel like the cast of participants should be introduced for later threads, which will cover the gasoline tax scam, mob wars in NYC, and more parapolitics as I go on (Mohammed Atta will make a cameo lol)

If anyone is interested in OC history I do recommend Red Mafiya. Friedman has been criticized for repeating tall tales told to him by the wiseguys he interviewed when the book first came out (20+ years ago) but most of it checked out

Thanks for reading, and keep on keepin’ on