‘I was the best-known barika in town’: The life story of a female heroin dealer in post-Soviet Georgia

Abstract

This article describes the life story of Milena, a 60-year-old former heroin dealer in (post)Soviet Georgia, as she narrated it to me shortly after her release from 6 years in prison. Milena’s story is both idiosyncratic and representative of the ways in which it is possible to be a woman in a privileged milieu hit hard by the collapse of the USSR and the social and political chaos of the post-Soviet period. The interest of Milena’s life story lies in the tension between the exceptionality of her trajectory and its integration into collective patterns. As an independent heroin dealer previously married to a ‘thief in law’ (post-Soviet mafia) based in the Georgian capital, Milena displays a significant deviation from the gender norms that govern both Georgian society as a whole and the position of women within this criminal brotherhood. In addition, Milena’s story allows us to reflect on the intersecting temporalities between the political history of a country in upheaval and her criminal and prison career. While Milena’s criminal career was actualised as a crisis opportunity, the narrative features anachronistic periodisation and explanatory patterns that reveal how history and morality combine to create original forms of individual and collective justifications.