Jim Finckenauer - Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian FSB lieutenant-colonel, recently died in a London hospital from a mysterious poisoning. His murder and those of other prominent Russians in recent years - public officials such as Kozlov and Starovoitova and journalists such as Borovik and Politkovskaya - show there's a way to go for Russia along the road to democracy.
Russia remains a sorely troubled country, now well more than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union. What is it about Russia that makes it unusually prone to a plague of crime, deviance, and corruption? Whether you look at czarist Russia or at the Soviet or post-Soviet periods, you find abundant historical evidence of this plague. Crime and corruption have likewise been a popular theme in Russian literature, from Gogol, Ilia Ilf and Evgeni Petrov to Alexander Zinoviev and Rasma Karklin. Recent global opinion surveys on perceptions of corruption place Russia near the bottom. Estimates conclude that the economic losses in Russia due to corruption amount to roughly $30 to $40 billion dollars a year.
Recognizing the perils of reducing complex problems to a brief analysis, I see this as consequence of several threads intersecting, none of which is unique to Russia, but each present there in an especially virulent form. In no particular order, first there is the blurred distinction that has existed throughout Russian history between private and public property. This blurring meant - and seemingly still means - that the taking of public property, whether the czar's timber or today's oil and gas deposits as one's own, is not regarded as criminal. Public office was, and is, seen as a license to the public's property.
Second is the powerful Russian historical tradition known as blat or "connections". Access to goods and services is gained through who one knows and what kinds of reciprocal obligations exist. Blat became very prominent as the lubricant for gaining scarce and prized goods during the Soviet era. The privatization of public properties during the past decade tells us that blat did not disappear with the USSR.
Then there is the protection system known as the krysha or "roof system" that has grown during the post-Soviet period. Kryshas exist because the legal and public security systems are weak and inadequate for protecting businesses and enforcing contracts, and because there is a surplus of gangs and various criminal groups (the so-called violent entrepreneurs) who can deliver protection at a price.
Arising from these historical and contemporary roots, leavened with the kind of "connive to survive" tactics necessitated by the Soviet economy of shortages, the result has been a pervasive "sucker mentality" afflicting certain segments of the Russian population. This is a mindset that is cynical about democracy and disdains the rule of law. It believes that might makes right, and that you get ahead by getting over. Following the rules and obeying the law is for suckers. Nihilistic materialism is the order of the day.
If and when this sort of thinking characterizes those occupying the positions of power, the consequences become predictable. Opposition and dissent, the hallmarks of democracy and of a free press, become increasingly intolerable. And hundreds of years of Russian history echo a message that the ends justify the means for dealing with the intolerable ones.
Jim Finckenauer is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University. Special thanks to Omar Alsam.
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Perhaps, after hearing for most of their lives that capitalism is a corrupt zero sum game, Russians with
the power and wherewithal to do so
are just playing the game how they were given to understand it is really played by those in the know.
As for comparing it to corruption in America, corporate or political, one
significant difference is Americans
can write about it without being
murdered or arrested.
January 16, 2007 10:30 PM | Report Offensive Comment
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Prof Finckenauer:
And pray tell what is the difference between the cronism of the Russian Elite and the cronism of the USA CEO-s [$200 million for failed CEO is the latest], war profiting "contractors" , political moves to foreclose investigation in war profiting {USA] bribery scandal {arms sales in UK], coodling the elite with tax-breaks [that they do not need - though they like] and forgetting about Katerina 18 months after the catastrophy.
It is always the sign of absolute power [one party ruling for 6 years in USA, one party rule in Ruassia, rampart Zionism in Israel with concurrent political corruption, etc] that corruption arises, and flurishes.
There is no country in the world with one party rule which is not corrupt - in the financial sense and at times also in the poplitical sense.
January 16, 2007 7:15 PM | Report Offensive Comment
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