Corruption in Russia, Past and present

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Corruption in Russia, Past and present

• Dr. Elena Shaskolskaya
• Associate Professor
• Department of History and world politics
• North-West academy of public administration,
• Saint-Petersburg, Russian Federation

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Types of corruption

• Administrative corruption
• Political corruption
• Business corruption
• Everyday corruption
• West corruption
• East corruption

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East corruption (deeply entrenched in the
social system)

• - state policy is dominated by private interests
  (privatization of the state)
• - administrative rent makes up the main part of
  state officials income
• - executive power interferes actively with
  business and has considerable additional income
• - corruption behavior is considered acceptable
  by the society and is not strongly opposed.

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• INDEM foundation data
• 50 of Russias active population is involved in
  corruption
• 75 - solved their latest problem by means of
  corruption
• 5 - did not note improvements in quality of
  work after giving a bribe receipt
• 2 - the bribe did not help solve the problem
• the average size of bribe given by Russian
  businessmen to state officials has increased over
  the last several years from 10 to 136 thousands
  
• Each year western businessmen give officials
  bribes for 33.5 bln
• The amount of corruption equals the amount of
  state budget 240 bln .

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• According to the surveys
• the most corrupted sphere is law enforcement (70
  of respondents)
• judiciary (70 )
• medicine and education (66 and 65
  respectfully).

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• The main opportunities for birth and scale
  development of corruption in Russia are
• weakness and inefficiency of the state
• overly intrusive and time-consuming bureaucracy
• lack of political competition
• backwardness of civil society
• general lack of transparency in government
  operations
• lack of freedom of mass media
• non competitiveness, natural resourses
  orientation and shadow character of economy.

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• The incentives to engage in corrupt behavior
• bribe capacity of legislation
• low government salaries
• weak legal enforcement
• overlapping or confused mandates of the
  different levels of government
• the prevalence of opaque non cash transactions
• poor systems of accounting and auditing
• excessive tax rates.

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• The reasons for corruption are
• deeply rooted in Russian history
• - inefficient authoritarian state
• - personification of power
• - etatization of all spheres of social life
• - undeveloped civil society
• - paternalism of mentality.

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• Historical factors that contributed to the
  formation of Russian civilization
• - big territory with no natural frontiers
• - risky agriculture
• proximity of nomadic tribes, which eventually
  led to submission to Mongol rule
• large administrative machine necessary to
  control and defend such a big state territory.

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• The main features of Russian political culture
• the enormous role of the state in social life
• the etatisation of all spheres of social
  activities
• the personification of power
• the absorption of civil society by the state
• non transparency of political authority on all
  levels of governance
• the lack of democratic traditions, no public
  policy
• the specific mentality which does not
  differentiate between the state and society
• the idea of a permanent outside threat
• the paternalist mentality
• the idea of corruption being something natural
  and controlled by the authorities.

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• Main ways to tackle corruption according to
  anticorruption rpoject
• anticorruption expertise of bills
• measures to strengthen the rule of law in
  general
• strengthening of parliamentary and judicial
  power
• improvement of state management, reform of law
  enforcement bodies
• exacting demands upon state officials
  (qualification, moral, etc.), providing higher
  salaries to state officials
• stronger checks on the finances of senior
  members of the government and legislature
• decisions on privatization and major public
  works contracts should be made on the basis of
  open competitive bidding
• all government departments will have to organize
  their own anticorruption subdivisions to tackle
  corruption.

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• Government and non-government organizations which
  are supposed to tackle corruption
• The Presidential Council on Counteracting
  Corruption
• State Duma Commission on legislative maintenance
  of corruption counteraction
• Department on Supervision of Anticorruption
  Legislation under the State Office Public
  Prosecutor
• Joint working group on corruption counteraction
  of the State Office Public Prosecutor
  (specializes in the army and other power bodies)
• Public Chamber
• Russian branch of Transparency International
• National Anticorruption Committee

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Thank you for attention!
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