Brighton Beach - Brooklyn
Brighton Beach Memoriam
The Giovanni and Setites aren't the only vampires to take advantage of the organized crime networks that humans build for themselves. With the Balkanization of the former U.S.S.R., organized crime has become omnipresent in Russia and other former Soviet republics. Many mortals have fled the tendrils of the so-called "Russian Mob" by fleeing to the United States or Israel; others have journeyed to those same places to take those tendrils with them. The cities of the East Coast, in particular, have been targeted and acquired by this group, with Philadelphia and New York having been most thoroughly acquired.
Seeing in these new "mafioskis" a possibility for undermining the Giovanni stranglehold on organized crime, a ninth-generation Tzimisce named Oleg Selivanov has taken it upon himself to utilize and direct the Russian mob. Selivanov himself has dwelt in the neighborhood now called Little Odessa (formerly Brighton Beach) since the 1930s, and his organization's operations have grown up around his haven. Always something of a shut-in, even for a Tzimisce, Selivanov has turned many of the more important Russian mobsters into ghouls, and through them he directs operations from legbreaking to shipping stolen cars back to Eastern Europe.
It is exceedingly rare for Selivanov to venture more than a block or two from his haven these nights; even his food is brought to him by trusted ghouls. Part of this paranoia developed during his living days as a mid-level Trostskyite; the rest stems from the shooting war that has developed between the Philadelphia and New York branches of the Russian syndicates. Ludmilla Kantor, another Tzimisce and a former refusenik, has seized control of the Russian mob in the City of Brotherly Love, and has started to attempt to wrest the New York mobs away as well. Determined to turn organized crime against the country that persecuted her while she was alive, Kantor has already tried to make inroads in Kiev, Izhevsk (home of the AK-47) and Moscow itself. Unfortunately, none of the childer she has sent to oversee such operations personally have remained in contact with headquarters for more than a month; for some unknown reason they keep disappearing.
- -- Oleg Selivanov -- The Crimelord of Brighton Beach
