How Soviet Mobsters Say It

By watching such movies as “The Godfather” and “Scarface,” Americans have garnered some sense of the swaggering speech that they think gangsters use. Here, based on several hours of talks with Soviet racketeers, is a lexicon of sorts of Moscow mobster terms. The literal meaning is given first, followed by its acquired usage.

Bandity: Bandits; the police and press term for racketeers and mob fighters.

Kachatsya, Nakacheny: To pump, be pumped; to lift weights, practice bodybuilding.

Kontora: The office; the police or the KGB.

Limon: Lemon; 1 million rubles.

Lokhi: Simpletons; dupes.

Lomshchiki: Breakers; swindlers who use sleight of hand to give victims far less than they are owed when counting out money.

Musor: Garbage; the police.

Napyerstochniki: Thimblers; those who run the Soviet equivalent of the rigged shell game, sometimes played with three cards.

Nayezhat, Bombit: To run over, to bomb; to go to a business and demand protection money.

Racket: Racket; borrowed from English in common speech, even though there was already a Russian word, vymogatelstvo.

Razborka: To disassemble or to take apart; to settle a conflict, usually when two large, armed groups meet to decide a dispute.

Sidet: To sit; to be in prison (also in general Soviet usage).

Skhodka: A get-together; a major, rare meeting of mob leaders.

Strelka: To switch, as in switching an appointment or place of appointment.

Zveri: Beasts; the swarthy people of the Caucasus Mountains, often active black marketeers and Mafiosi.