"3 Galeotti further notes how the myth and mystery surrounding the subject has been accompanied by often alarmist reporting in the Russian press: "For example, when former Russian Interior Minister Kulikov presented a progress report to President Yeltsin on the fight against organized crime, in June 1997, he had been drilled by his aides to avoid the popular term Mafiya in favor of the more neutral 'organized criminal groupings,' even though his actual report used the term

             "4 Obviously, the members of the Mafiya do not like the term. Galeotti points out one of the difficulties in assessing the strength of the organization because the Russians use a very elastic definition for not just the Mafiya but for organized crime, a term that includes "almost any group of more than three people who committed a premeditated offence."5 Galeotti states that there are probably some 350 genuine organized criminal groupings, including between a dozen and twenty major cartels. But such confusion over definitions can be important. He further notes that the fact that Russians, as well as outsiders, continue using the term mafiya is seen as an interesting fact: .

             The "original", Sicilian Mafia is not just an organization, but also a culture, a way of behaving. To put it another way, it is a culture which depends on articulating its values through a type of organization.(3) Disciplined, hierarchical and patriarchal, it requires its members to conform to certain rules and expectations. These entail "thieves' honor", patronage and clientelism, and competition and demonstrable success, which is increasingly defined in terms of wealth and political connections. Transliterated into Cyrillic as Mafiya, Russian organized crime is at once reminiscent of but also distinct from its Sicilian counterpart.6.

             Numerous observers have noted the strength of Russian organized crime in the post-Communist era as the rigid controls of the past fall away.