He's read a few pseudo-science books and so he's able to make references to the occult here and there. His "Buddhism" is likewise really just an ersatz designation that really infers a drug-fueled interest in "tuning out". Escapism is the order of the day.

Your thoughts are very close to my own on the main subject. I can say that luckily, the Russian movie and TV industry was a bit larger and so it survived the telenovelas and B-movies that flooded the Russian airwaves in the 1990s, but even now there is still a tendency to watch that sort of crap and Russian TV still buys telenovelas.

As for your question about the mafia, in the 1990s it was everywhere. Putin "cleaned house" when he came to power in 2001. Examples: a powerful mafia boss who virtually ran the Urals region was arrested for bribing a minor official about $100. He hanged himself in jail the next day. Two groups are informed that they need to meet the next day to "sort things out" about shakedown payments to a particular restaurant. They all pull up in their cars, get out and try to figure out who arranged the meeting. Ten seconds later KGB-related special forces kill them all with full machine guns in an ambush.

As for the police, they still harass people in Russia.