When the Soviet Union collapsed, a criminal caste that had survived the Gulags stepped into the vacuum and built an empire out of the wreckage. Director Alexander Gentelev tracks Russian organized crime from Stalin-era prison camps, where the original "thieves in law" carved out their own code, through the chaos of the 1990s, when former gangsters used privatization to turn stolen state assets into legitimate fortunes. The film gets three of its subjects to talk on camera: Grigori Lerner, Ludwig Fainberg, and a former mob boss, all speaking with the calm of men who no longer fear prosecution. Fainberg recalls buying Soviet military helicopters and submarines for drug cartels and running a Miami strip club as a front for Colombian trafficking. Archival footage and law-enforcement interviews trace how this network spread from Moscow to New York, Tel Aviv, and Antwerp's diamond district. What emerges is less a crime story than a business history, showing how a prison subculture's code of honor became the operating manual for a global criminal economy.