The Marat Gusarov Brigade

Marat_Gusarov · March 11

The Marat Gusarov Brigade is a venture-specific collection of criminals operating at the behest of, or in connection to, established Eurasian Organized Crime (EOC) authoritative structures active in Los Santos, overseas, and in the greater San Andreas state. As of 2024, the Marat Gusarov Brigade is believed to be among the most powerful of the formally-recognized EOC organizations currently staking claim to the West Coast of the United States.

Though the overarching conglomerate of criminals has been attributed to Gusarov leadership, many members belong – or have belonged – to other organizations such as Armenian Power, Pure Armenian Blood, and other post-Soviet, Russian and Brighton Beach-originating bratva (“brotherhood”) and organizatsiya (“organization”) structures. Other associates have no identifiable ties to recognized EOC groups, and have, instead, become affiliated with Gusarov as a result of their individual criminal merit.

The structure of the Marat Gusarov Brigade mirrors EOC elements already active in both New York and overseas, in that authority rests in the hands of a recognized party of the vory v zakone or, in many cases, a singular vor or “thief in law.” As the resident vor, Gusarov, is responsible for mediating internal and external disputes between factions, funneling criminal proceeds to overarching criminal organizations overseas, compiling finances to bolster the organization’s own obschak (collective organizational fund), and, ultimately, serving as the “front” or face of the endgame goals championed by the overseas EOC groups to which Gusarov ultimately answers. Gusarov and his closest associates are also believed to oversee control of the organization’s krysha (“roof”), a catch-all term for an extortion enterprise that preys upon and collects “protection” fees from local businesses.

ORGANIZATIONAL OUTLOOK

The Marat Gusarov Brigade is presumed to be the “heir apparent” and now sits at the head of a series of EOC cells that have operated in San Andreas since the 1980s. Though the organization now carries his namesake in the eyes of law enforcement, Gusarov is reputed only to be the latest in a line of avtoritety hailing from former Soviet republics that have, at various times, included Russia itself, Armenia, Georgia, Chechnya, Belarus, the Balkans, Albania and the Ukraine.

Whereas, ranging from the Jackson-Vanik Amendment of 1974 to the dissolution of the Soviet bloc in 1991, diaspora from the former USSR overwhelmingly peopled the East Coast of the United States, Los Santos, and the greater West Coast, too, became a haven of criminality for these expatriates. The perpetual turbulence characteristic of the Los Santos underworld has created a “revolving door” for transnational organized crime groups to settle in the city, colonize the criminal rackets in which their membership is most specialized, expand upon these ventures to fill their coffers, and then cut ties and move on when law enforcement is alerted to their activities or their schemes lose viability.

The list of crims that have peopled Los Santos and championed their own organizations there are a veritable “who’s who” in the greater global EOC ecosystem. Such luminaries include Vladimir “Moroz” Morozov, who rose to American criminal prominence and garnered international acclaim in the mid-1990s when his associates used a rocket-propelled grenade launcher to destroy the home of a rival to his heroin trafficking enterprise, Vladimir “A-Tyets” Kazakov, whose organization introduced to Los Santos the rigid hierarchal structure of Russian bratvas, and Ivan “Vanya” Maslov, a shrewd criminal authority, to whom the modernization of the West Coast EOC landscape has largely been attributed.

Maslov, and his second-in-command, Eduard “Edya” Boklov, are believed have been the first to recognize the criminal potential of the many disparate Armenian and Armenian-American criminal organizations already active in the city. It is believed some of the sophisticated, white-collar schemes perpetrated by groups such as Armenian Power in their latter years can be traced back to Boklov’s initial tutelage, as well as the intervention of Armenian vory.

In this modern era, EOC groups dispensed with the rigidity of the structures perpetuated by their overarching parent organizations overseas and, instead, embraced a venture-specific, multicellular hierarchy that cared little for the nationality, ethnicity or existing criminal ties of those furthering its aims. Through this adaptation, now a trademark of EOC groups operating in the US, EOC cells not only bolstered their own profits, but further obfuscated the attempts of law enforcement attempting to find some semblance of investigational familiarity in their operations. Inter and intra-organizational cooperation between these groups also paved the path to the pioneering of new criminal ventures and lent to their membership a heretofore-unknown degree of sophistication and vertical and horizontal integration.

Though this modernistic, sandbox style of criminality boasted many pros to those championing it, it did not come without its challenges. Internecine feuds between EOC cells, groups and organizational structures in San Andreas were commonplace and, since the early 2000s, dozens, if not hundreds, have lost their lives to these myriad street “beefs.” From Albanian-American drug kingpins, such as Gjergj “Boy George” Bajraktari, to “hit-and-run” imported cells championed by the likes of Grigoriy “Grisha” Aranovich, to the long-standing, largely-domestic “brigades” of Armenian vory Asbed “Abe” Grigoryan and Mathous “Yego” Yeghoyan – all have, at various times, occupied the throne of the EOC underworld in San Andreas, and equally as often, have squandered this control and lost or ceded it to the hungriest of their counterparts.

Of particular interest in this context is the organizations of “Edya” Boklov, “Grisha” Aranovich, Moris “Comrade Moe” Roshal, Naum Kaplan, Ulan Zada, Yuri Sobolev and, now, Marat Gusarov. The “family tree” of these organization, as understood by law enforcement, are not 1:1, continual carbon copies of their predecessors, but instead comprise new “outgrowths” and “branches” that are believed to have sprouted from the same originating “trunk.” Membership within these organizations can, in many cases, be traced through the eras to back to the specific individual’s arrival on US soil. In many cases, these individuals have belonged to multiple of these organizations, which have been differentiated formally from the others simply by the opinions and observations of the law enforcement agencies investigating them at the time. However, in the eyes of the individual member, their progression and ascendance within the ranks is more likely to appear linear, and comes as a result of adaptation and criminal longevity as opposed to any formal “changing of the guard” on an organizational level.

Though it is nigh impossible to track the many, autonomous tentacles of such enterprises and, thus, predict their underworld trajectory, experts agree that the emergence of Marat Gusarov and his associates suggests a return to status quo for the EOC ecosystem in San Andreas under the umbrella of a central ruling body. In his bid to return to normalcy, it is believed Gusarov will be forced to quell internal tensions between affiliated factions, including Armenian Power and its various offshoots, in order to enjoy the same criminal success achieved by his forebears.

Edited 18 hours ago by Marat_Gusarov