Tetievsky

One of the most prominent Russian criminal families of the late 19th and early 20th century. Mori Tetievsky (1853-1896) was born to a poverty-stricken Jewish farming family, and was orphaned at the age of 10. Upon moving to St Petersburg using all that was left by his parents to travel, he found work as a debt-collector's apprentice, where he came into contact with some of the most high profile Russian gangsters of the time.

Although little is known about the precise details of his rise to prominence, it is clear that by 1878 he was one of the most powerful mobsters in St Petersburg. He built a vast fortune mostly through the assassination of key criminal chiefs and the incorporation of their organisations into his own.

He married Rosa Lehmann, an immigrant German Jew, in 1980, a late marriage, and fathered 3 children in the next three years. He groomed his son Moisei, as his number two, from an early age.

Mori died in 1896 from a disease suspected to be Leukaemia, which forced Moisei to take over the helm of probably the largest criminal network in Russia at the tender age of 15. Moisei Tetievsky continued to run the business in the same manner and was as careful as his father had been, to distance himself from most of the organizations activities.

However, in 1906 Moisei was killed by the Russian secret service during an attack on a underground synagogue as part as a particularly violent pogrom campaign, carried out by the tsar (mostly as misdirected revenge for the rebellious events of 1905).

This caused a tremendous power struggle amongst the fragmented groups within the Tetievsky organization. Moisei's wife and small child Samuel were forced into hiding knowing that they were wanted dead by the majority of St Petersburg's Gangsters. Samuel and his mother escaped to Britain under the maiden name of his grandmother 'Lehmann'. they are thought to have been left with none of the amassed fortune, with its likely destination the bank account of the head of the Russian secret police.

A young Mori Tetievsky (only known photograph)

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu