How Adigamov Gang Fell Apart in Dema's Bandit Era
Adigamov was considered the most important person in Dema for almost 20 years.
UFA1.RU continues to tell the criminal legends of Bashkortostan. This time, it«s about the authority nicknamed Uncle Misha, who in the turbulent years controlled crime in the Dema district of Ufa. In October, he could have celebrated his 75th birthday, but became a victim of a bloody massacre.
His real name was Mukatdar Adigamov, but friends called him Mikhail or, when he gained authority, Uncle Misha and also Mikhalych. Adigamov was born in 1950, became interested in wrestling from childhood, and trained under honored Russian coach Nikolai Popov, who founded the first sambo and judo school in Ufa. Under Popov«s guidance, Mukatdar became a Master of Sports of the USSR.
Photos from Mukatdar Adigamov«s family archive published in a dedicated VKontakte group.
But in the 1980s, the Soviet Union began to collapse, and with it, the crime rate across the country grew to threatening proportions. Adigamov organized a fight club in Dema, where he gathered and trained athletes himself. They formed the core of a team that, under Uncle Misha«s leadership, took control of the district.
In his youth, Adigamov was a successful wrestler and later gathered talented athletes.
In the 1990s, members of the Dema fight club were repeatedly caught in robberies and extortion—they protected businessmen and squeezed other bandits out of the district. The founder, however, remained beyond the reach of Themis. Leaders of such groups typically do not take direct part in criminal activities, only giving orders. If the perpetrators were caught, they kept the leader«s name secret under threat of death. Even if he was suspected of something, someone else would be found to take the blame.
Adigamov organized tournaments and allocated funds for sports events in the district.
Formally, Adigamov was engaged in coaching and entrepreneurship. His name still appears in Kontur.Focus with several now-closed firms—in catering, transportation, and fuel sales. For example, Uncle Misha was considered the owner of the first Dema restaurant, Olimp, located on the ground floor of one of the few high-rises in the district near the park. There, the coach relaxed with his associates and settled matters.
This was the location of Adigamov«s Olimp restaurant in the Dema district.
Although Uncle Misha remained clean before the law, at least formally, almost everyone in Dema knew what he did, and many even called him the overseer. That«s what crime world leaders called authorities entrusted with controlling crime in key territories. For instance, in the 1990s, the leader of the criminal world in the Bashkir capital was considered to be Yegor Ufimsky, who had previously served a substantial sentence in a correctional colony, where he gained the status of a thief in law.
Adigamov, however, never served time and was not «crowned» by representatives of the criminal world. Nevertheless, ordinary residents saw him as a kind of «godfather» from the cult mafia film. People were afraid to cross him, but at the same time, those who fell victim to injustice or lawlessness could turn to him for help.
Petitioners came to Uncle Misha at the same Olimp. According to them, he did not refuse even seemingly minor problems for his level: he could order his people to find and punish robbers who had cleaned out an already impoverished family, protect someone from a fraudulent deal, or settle the return of even a small debt. For this, people were willing to forgive Adigamov everything else.
According to acquaintances, a photo in his office showed him next to Vladimir Putin at a tournament.
«He was a normal man, and in the conditions the country lived in then, it was impossible to rule Dema any other way,» one subscriber recalled under a publication about Uncle Misha in the «Demchane» group on VKontakte.
«You could go to him with any problem. He solved issues,» a district resident said.
«He had authority not only among the youth but also with the district administration,» another wrote.
«At that time, it was either you or them. He prevented lawlessness and scams,» stated another.
«Uncle Misha didn»t allow drugs into Dema, punished thieves and swindlers fairly, was very kind to decent people, never refused help, and demanded from his students what he saw in them,« a friend of the Adigamov family recalled.
«If it weren»t for him, other people would have worked in our district, and much harsher than him, and Adigamov, no matter how you look at it, loved his district and was loyal to it,« a Dema resident noted.
However, not everyone is so warm in their memories of the Adigamov gang. The fate of those who dared to go against them turned out to be tragic. In the early 1990s, a pair of bandits tried to shoot Uncle Misha but only wounded him, and later fell into the hands of law enforcement. They went to trial and served their sentences, but did not live long after release: one drowned in his own bathtub, and the other«s body was found dead on the street.
The authority managed to avoid death during a second assassination attempt. Again, he was wounded, losing an eye, but the attacker«s fate was even less enviable: he died of a drug overdose. The third time, providence seemed to protect Adigamov: unknown assailants shot up the »godfather«s» car from Dema, but he wasn«t in it. At the last moment, he changed his mind about going, and only his subordinates were caught in the crossfire and killed.
In the first attempt, Adigamov was shot in the neck, and in the second, he lost an eye.
«It was shot up while moving, and no one had a chance to escape from it,» Adigamov«s son said. »The guys who were in the car were wonderful fellows, I remember how my mother and sister worried about them.«
In 2008, fortune finally turned against Uncle Misha. By that time, given how many other influential figures had not survived the bandit era, he was called «the last of the authorities.» The owner of Olimp fell when he faced the agility of another athlete—almost 30 years younger.
By that time, Adigamov was 58 years old and already raising his grandchildren.
A local woman complained to Uncle Misha that she hadn«t received money for selling a car from a certain Ivan Kirillov. He was involved in boxing and had already caught Adigamov»s eye. The authority tried to rein in the «youngster,» but instead of submissive obedience, he unexpectedly met resistance.
At that time, Adigamov lived on Magistralnaya Street and spent free time walking his dog.
On January 31, 2008, Kirillov showed up at Adigamov«s home with a sawn-off shotgun when he was taking his dog for a walk. The guest shot Uncle Misha in the leg, then led him out of the entrance and put him in a car where two of his accomplices were sitting—boxing coach Vasily Sudutkin and another athlete Alexey Platonov. They brought the wounded man to a house in Chernikovka on Lev Tolstoy Street, allegedly to provide medical assistance.
Kirillov took him inside and came out alone. He told his comrades that «the issue was resolved,» without specifying how. Later, Sudutkin was informed that local residents had called the police—Adigamov was found dead. Kirillov responded by saying that the authority had attacked him, so he had to defend himself.
That house in Chernikovka has been demolished and a new one built in its place.
Later, all three were detained and tried. The condition in which Adigamov«s body was found is described in the verdict. Besides the gunshot wound to the thigh, he had broken ribs, a bruised head, and a slit throat. The prosecution classified what happened as kidnapping and murder. Additionally, Kirillov was charged with weapons possession.
He was sentenced to 12 years in a strict-regime correctional colony. The other two were given five years each, as the court believed their companion had decided to kill Adigamov on his own. The victim«s wife tried to challenge this decision, but the Supreme Court of Russia reviewed her complaint and left the sentence unchanged.
A few months after Uncle Misha«s death, one of his closest associates, Rafael Galiullin, was killed. He was shot on the threshold of a private house by a former member of the gang who had recently been released and, according to one version, hoped for a reward for loyalty. According to his wife, Galiullin came out to the uninvited guest in home clothes and was shot on the porch with a Saiga shotgun.
Uncle Misha«s grave at the cemetery in the Dema district of Ufa.
Later, several more members of Uncle Misha«s brigade ended up in the dock, accused of extortion and kidnapping. These events were merely echoes of the Adigamov era. Almost all of its founder»s firms have been liquidated, some passed to his son and daughter, and the restaurant that served as the gang«s base has long been closed.
Uncle Misha was buried at Balanovskoye Cemetery. A huge crowd of local residents gathered to see him off on his final journey, among whom other major businessmen and even officials could be seen. In the following years, judo tournaments dedicated to Adigamov were held in Ufa.
A photo from one of the tournaments in memory of Adigamov held in 2014.
Ivan Kirillov has already served his sentence for the murder of the authority, but after his release, he ended up in the dock again. This time, he was accused of extortion. According to the investigation, Kirillov and four others took money and buses from private carriers in Ufa to organize an intercity route themselves. In September 2025, they were found guilty, but before the sentence took effect, an appeal was filed. The proceedings are now in the republic«s Supreme Court.
Earlier, we spoke with the son of another criminal authority from Ufa, who did not survive the 1990s. Also read about a thief in law who spent almost half his life behind bars and died at 61 abroad, and only after that his body was returned to his homeland, where he was buried next to his father.
