Russian Social Science Review, vol. 46, no. 1, January–February 2005, pp. 19–36.

© 2005 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.

ISSN 1061–1428/2005 $9.50 + 0.00.

Diagnosing Corruption in Russia

A Sociological Analysis

A few words about the INDEM Foundation

The regional public foundation called Information Science for

Democracy (INDEM), founded in October 1997, sees one of its
tasks as that of expanding and developing the activity of INDEM’s
Center for Applied Political Research, an independent noncom-
mercial organization that has been functioning in the field of prac-
tical policy since 1990. The Center’s main declared purpose is to
promote the emergence and development of democratic institu-
tions in Russia, making use of the latest advances in political soci-
ology, political science, psychology, and information technologies.
The INDEM Foundation is a noncommercial, nonstate public
association that does not have a membership; it was founded by
individuals on the basis of voluntary contributions of property and
a community of nonproperty interests for the purpose of putting
together and implementing projects, initiatives, and programs that
are included in the sphere of the Foundation’s activity.

English translation © 2004, 2005 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text
© 2002 “Alma mater (Vestnik vysshei shkoly)” “Diagnostika rossiiskoi korruptsii:
sotsiologicheskii analiz,” Alma mater (Vestnik vysshei shkoly), 2002, no. 5,
pp. 43–49. A publication of the Russian Federation Ministry of Education, the
Eurasian University Association, Association for Engineering Education, and the
Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs.
This article was prepared by O. Popov. An abridged version can be found at the
INDEM Foundation’s Web site: www.indem.ru. It was published in full in Cor-
ruption in Russia: To Understand Is to Defeat [Korruptsiia v Rossii: poniat’,
znachit pobedit’].

19
20 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW

Sources for the formation of the Foundation’s assets can in-

clude revenues from those taking part in it; voluntary property
contributions, donations, and subsidies that come in from organi-
zations and individuals in this country and from other countries;
earnings from entrepreneurial activity and transactions with secu-
rities; and loans, grants, and other revenues that are not prohibited
by the laws of the Russian Federation. Earnings of the INDEM
Foundation due to entrepreneurial activity have to be used exclu-
sively for the purposes of accomplishing its objectives.
The priority foci of the Foundation’s research work are as fol-
lows: Russian, foreign, and international parliaments and other
elected state and international bodies; other bodies of governance
and administration; political elites; parties and other civic and
noncommercial organizations; economic institutions and processes;
Russian, foreign, and international principles, forms, and methods
of forming democratic institutions and the shaping of social and
political consciousness of the electorate, and forms, methods, and
principles governing the conduct of election campaigns and refer-
endums in Russia and in other countries; and basic threats to mod-
ern civilization, including corruption, terrorism, illegal trafficking
in narcotics, and so on.
The founders of the Foundation include Iu. Baturin, V. Nikonov,
E. Pain, G. Satarov, L. Smirniagin, M. Fedotov, and others. Mem-
bers of the Foundation’s Trusteeship Council include V. Iliushin,
S. Karaganov, N. Karlov, K. Lubenchenko, Iu. Ryzhov, A. Salmin,
V. Iadov, and others.

About the study

This study, conducted from the end of 1999 through 2001, is based
on in-depth expert interviews and two sociological surveys with
representative samples of citizens, including entrepreneurs.
In the course of carrying out the project we interviewed twenty-
three experts including former highly placed officials in the ad-
ministration of the president and the government of the Russian
Federation, deputies to the State Duma, personnel of law enforce-
ment bodies, journalists, and businessmen, and we questionnaire
 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW 21

surveyed citizens in a sample of 2,017 respondents who repre-

sented all federal districts. The number of entrepreneurs surveyed
came to 709. The geography of the survey was the same, and the
representation was made to reflect the various spheres of activity
and the scale of the business [biznes].

The main findings of the interviews

At present, the practice of traditional monetary forms of corrup-

tion has become quite widespread; its foundations were laid down
during Soviet rule and even long before that. At the same time, its
economic component has increased. On the whole, though, cor-
ruption has acquired a more open and cynical nature. Profits from
corruption deals have gone up, while the risks have gone down.
In the opinion of experts, the type and growth of corruption
have been conditioned by specific characteristics of the period of
transition, particularly the substantial share of the shadow economy;
the colossal volumes of redistribution of property ownership; high
taxes and a tangled tax system; unwarranted intervention in the
economy by ruling authority; the plethora of mixed forms of prop-
erty ownership (private and state); and the weakness of the finan-
cial system. Also of interest is the fact that, as some experts say, in
the period of transition, corruption served as a kind of “lubricant”
that facilitated the transition to the new economic system.
In their remarks about the circumstances of state service that
helped to foster corruption, the experts not only pointed to the low
wages and salaries paid to civil servants and the weakness of so-
cial guarantees on retirement, as well as lack of legal protection;
they also emphasized that raising wages and salaries does not, in
and of itself, lead to a lowering of the level of corruption. Also
mentioned was the practice of buying state jobs.
From the standpoint of the spread of this phenomenon, the fol-
lowing pattern can be discerned: the greater the flow of money,
the higher the level of corruption. The list of the departments that
are the most corrupt, as drawn up by the experts, is quite exten-
sive, and the following types of “corruption services” ended up in
the top seven: export licenses and quotas; budget transfers, tax
22 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW

offsets, and so on; servicing of budget accounts; barter and in-

kind debt payments in various regions; privatization; taxes and
customs fees; and the banking sphere (the interviews were con-
ducted in late 1999 and early 2000). In the opinion of experts, the
level of Federation entities is the most corrupted. Moreover, the
highest level of corruption is characteristic of the subsidized re-
gions (compared to the donor regions), but the scale of corruption
deals is greater in the wealthy regions, where flows of finance are
more considerable, especially in regions where exports make up a
large component of the economy.
Among the bodies that comprise the legal system, whose job it
is to combat corruption, the courts are the weakest link, especially
the arbitration courts. Among the key problems that the experts
named involving the MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs], the
Procuracy, and the FSB [Federal Security Service] was the dwin-
dling of experienced and honest personnel. These departments are
characterized by the phenomenon of concealment of materials from
enforcement operations or criminal investigations for the purpose
of gathering and utilizing incriminating materials, whose findings
are traded to be used for blackmail or political and administrative
aims. As a result, the fight against corruption is subverted by the
struggle between varius groups of racketeers [korruptsionery]. The
use of law enforcement bodies as a tool of political and adminis-
trative pressure is in widespread practice everywhere, a means of
carrying out dishonest competition in business.
A large number of examples attests to the level of corruption of
the militia on various levels. In particular, there is the practice of
providing protection for narcotics traffickers and the sale of con-
fiscated narcotics. As time goes on the militia has been driving out
the criminal gangs that have provided “protection” for small and
mid-sized businesses, and it has subsequently taken over these
functions itself, along with the corresponding earnings, of course.
In general, moreover, law enforcement bodies have been provid-
ing “cover” for the crime business in a variety of spheres. Accord-
ing to estimates, as much as 40 percent of the gains from contraband
activity, for example, go to the smugglers, while the rest of it goes
to maintain the “protection” provided by law enforcement bodies.
 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW 23

In discussing political corruption, the experts made special

mention of the State Duma. Apparently the market for corruption
services in that body of authority is already well established, and
the corresponding rates are also in place. As a result, the earnings
from corruption on the part of a deputy in a key committee may
exceed his official income by fifteen to twenty times.
To a certain extent the existence of conditions favorable to cor-
ruption is also due to the current state of Russia’s laws, and this
refers not just to the laws themselves but to the specific stipula-
tions of various legislative acts. In addition, at present we do not
have a very effective law on lobbying, so that as a result lobbying
is corrupted.
Corruption in Russia has entered the stage of formation of net-
works of corruption—groups organized and set up for the joint
extraction of gain from corruption activity. Experts suggest that
any network of corruption includes three components: a commer-
cial or financial structure that handles profits and benefits and turns
them into money; a group of state officials who provide “cover”
when desired decisions are made; and a protection/defense group
that includes officials of law enforcement bodies. Inasmuch as all
initial capital in Russia was formed out of state property, budget
funds, and the rights to service them, networks of corruption in
Russia came into being on the basis of existing state structures or
structures that had been state run in the recent past.
In assessing corruption, the focus is mostly on direct financial
losses and much less often on indirect losses. The direct losses
include, in particular, the exporting of capital, which, in most cases,
is apparently accomplished by corrupt means, in amounts esti-
mated at $20 to $25 billion per year. Losses due to flaws in the tax
system add up to about 25 percent of the GDP, and payments in
the form of bribes to officials of high rank (and even of low rank)
are estimated to add up to 10 percent of the amount of the deal.
And yet the basic costs of corruption include the destruction of
the state system, the state apparatus, and the law enforcement bod-
ies, the obstacles to normal economic development, which is to
say, systemic losses that can be summarized as follows.
First, disruption of the mechanisms of competition, of a normal
24 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW

market economy. Corruption puts a damper on economic growth

and development by increasing overhead costs, reducing invest-
ment, and increasing uncertainty and risk to an extreme degree.
Second, the social effect. Uncontrolled and unjustified stratifi-
cation of incomes seriously worsens people’s lives and creates
social tension, because in the long run a source of corruption con-
sists of insufficient pay to the masses of working people.
Third, the political costs. Political instability and the state’s in-
ability to function pose a threat to democracy, inasmuch as a state
that has been “privatized” is not able to create a normal economy
and provide people with a normal standard of living.

Assessments of corruption

When it comes to the public’s ideas about corruption and esti-

mates about its magnitude, opinions are astonishingly uniform. If
we compare the various social ailments that are tearing the people
of Russia apart today, there is no question that corruption is the
most massive. Thus it is surprising that citizens seem to take such
a calm view of the phenomenon: in the list of problems that are
cause for concern, corruption ranks only in ninth place. And yet
in-depth interviews with experts paint a dark picture. The same
thing is reflected in calculations.
Only one-third of entrepreneurs and less than half of the other
respondents speak of the necessity of avoiding corruption. An ac-
tive attitude against corruption, moreover, is characteristic of only
13 percent of entrepreneurs and 15 percent of other citizens. Hence,
the assessment of corruption on the level of public consciousness,
as a social problem, is not in keeping either with its magnitude or
the threats that it poses.
It is worth pointing out here that the assessment of the level of
corruption is influenced both by the interpretation of this phenom-
enon per se and by people’s confidence in ruling authorities. On
the average, the higher the level of this interpretation the higher
the level of corruption in the country seems to be. Conversely, the
higher the level of trust in the authorities the lower it seems to be.
In the opinion of the authors of the paper, the figures shown in
 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW 25

Table 1 are a reflection of respondents’ extremely mythologized

notions about corruption and its structure, in this case is expressed
in their assessments of the level of corruption of the different in-
stitutions of authority (levels, branches, and so on), which, as it
turns out, do not correspond to the actual state of affairs.
The mythologized character of these notions is manifested most
graphically in the discrepancy between the estimates of institu-
tions of authority and actual practices. When citizens assess the
level of corruption of everyday situations in which they have to
deal with the authorities, their assessments correspond completely
with practice. It has been found, in particular, that they are inter-
connected with two parameters of the market of corrupt services:
the risk of corruption itself (the likelihood of finding oneself in a
corrupt deal, if there is a need for a certain service from the state)
and the average amount of the bribe in that market.
However, just as soon as citizens and entrepreneurs try to assess
the level of corruption of institutions of authority they immedi-
ately find themselves under the influence of the myths that are
circulating in society, enhanced by the mass media. For example,
the less contact citizens have with an institution of authority the
higher the level of corruption that they are inclined to attribute to
it. And this is only natural: the press has a greater affinity for writ-
ing about corruption in the upper crust, major scandals.
At the same time, respondents’ judgments about corruption at-
test to some level of dichotomy in people’s consciousness; one
graphic evidence can be seen in the differences in the practice of
corrupt deals and the assessments of that practice. In response to a
question as to who is most likely to take the initiative in the case of
a corrupt deal, in the opinion of respondents, in more than one-
third of the cases citizens ascribe it to the official. In response to a
question as to their own practice, on the other hand (an account of
the last case of a corrupt deal), only 17 percent ascribed the initia-
tive to an official. Among those who, in assessing the generalized
experience, attribute the initiative to an official, only 24 percent
indicated that that was exactly what happened with them.
In response to questions as to the possible causes of corruption
(when there is a chance to choose between different options), the
26 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW

Table 1

Ratings of Level of Corruption of Various Organizations as Assessed

by Respondents (the higher the rank the more corrupt the organization is,
as assessed subjectively)

Organization Rating ranks

entrepreneurs nonentrepreneurs

Political parties 28 29
Traffic safety services 29 28
State Duma 27 27
Law enforcement bodies 26 26
Private business 13 25
Council of the Federation 24 24
Communal services 21 23
Administration of a Federation entity 25 22
Local representative body 20 21
Administration of a municipality 19 20
Lower courts 23 19
Legislative body of a Federation entity 18 18
Mass media 22 17
Government of the Russian Federation 17 16
Administrations and instructors in
higher educational institutions 14 15
Armed forces 15 14
Administration of the president of the
Russian Federation 16 13
Higher courts 10 12
State enterprises 9 11
State banks 8 10
Administrations and personnel of polyclinics
& hospitals 6 9
Bodies of national security 11 8
Administrations & personnel of social
security offices, employment offiices,
and other institutions 7 7
Law enforcement organizations 5 6
Trade unions 12 5
Church, religious organizations 4 4
Civic organizations for environmental protection 3 3
Other civic organizations 2 2
Administrations and teachers in secondary
schools, training schools, & technicums 1 1
 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW 27

respondents as a rule choose the rational variant and list an abun-

dance of institutional causes. However, the same respondents are
several times more likely to say that under Yeltsin there was more
corruption than there is now, in the era of Putin, even though this
opinion is at variance with actual practice.
When the respondents are asked to make a choice from among
several optional strategies to resist corruption, their choice also
turns out to be a rational one: in more than half of the cases, citi-
zens propose combating the causes that give rise to corruption.
When, however, such a step has to be taken under conditions of an
open answer, a large percentage are inclined toward punitive mea-
sures. In similar fashion, in the case of choosing from among seven
possible options for self-justification on the part of a hypothetical
official who has been convicted of taking a bribe, almost one-third
of respondents mentioned his low salary as a causal factor. But
only 5 percent of them would be willing to support an increase in
taxes in order to raise that salary, while more than 80 percent would
prefer to make criminal punishment more harsh.

Practices of everyday corruption

The questionnaire survey and its comparison with the findings of

other studies show that the intensiveness of everyday corruption
has not gone down, at best, in the past two or three years: not less
than half of the active population of Russia has been involved in it.
More than 75 percent of citizens, recollecting the last situation of
corruption that they were involved in, acknowledged that they took
advantage of the opportunity offered to them. Only 10 percent of
the respondents in the entire sample have the practice of regularly
and deliberately setting up and utilizing ties of corruption with
officials, for the purpose of deriving benefits for themselves and
their relatives and others close to them.
In our study respondents indicated the situation, the kind of prob-
lem that they needed to solve, for which they resorted to paying a
bribe, and how much they spent on it. This enabled us to calcu-
late the figures of the characteristics of the consumer corruption
market of services, three of which are presented in Table 2.
 28 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW
Table 2

Characteristics of Situations in Which Respondents Attempt to Solve Problems by Means of Corruption

Risk of corruption Structure Market volume

total
Situations (problems) of payments,
interaction between likelihood, market, millions of
citizens and bodies of authority % place % place dollars place
Obtaining free medical help in a polyclinic 22.2 11 12.5 2 183.1 5
Getting a slot in a hospital for a free operation
or treatment of a serious disease 25.8 9 8.4 5 236.8 4
Being in a hospital, receiving good service free of charge 27.3 7 11.8 3 182.5 6
Enrolling in a desired school & graduating successfully 13.2 15 2.1 12 70.1 8
Enrolling in an institution of higher learning, transferring
to another institution 36.0 2 10.9 4 449.4 1
Applying for or recalculating a pension 11.3 16 0.6 16 0.3 16
Applying for the right to receive social benefits 16.2 13 1.9 13 6.6 15
Solving a problem relating to being drafted for
military service 32.6 3 1.6 14 12.7 14
Obtaining a desired job or getting a promotion 24.6 10 4.4 6 56.2 10
Acquiring a plot of land for a dacha or for a farm plot &/or
applying for the right to own one 14.9 14 0.8 15 20.1 13
Obtaining housing &/or applying for a legal right to housing 28.9 5 4.0 8 123.0 7
Obtaining housing repair and operation services 32.2 4 4.2 7 22.7 12
Obtaining justice in court 26.2 8 3.1 9 274.5 3
Receiving protection & help from the militia 27.4 6 2.2 11 30.0 11
Obtaining registration in place of residence, a passport
or passport to go abroad, permission to acquire a

RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW 29

weapon, etc. 19.7 12 2.5 10 65.8 9
Settling a situation with the traffic police (obtaining a
license, technical inspection, traffic violation, etc.) 59.3 1 14.7 1 368.4 2
30 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW

The characteristics presented in Table 2 have the following

meaning. “Risk of corruption” means the assessment of the likeli-
hood that the respondent who finds himself in a particular situa-
tion (the need to solve a problem) will end up involved in a deal of
corruption. For example, if someone finds it necessary to get help
or protection from the militia (not counting the traffic police), in
27.4 percent of the cases he will encounter corruption. “Structure”
is the percentage of all bribes paid by respondents in the market of
corrupt services. For example, of the total number of bribes that
all citizens have paid, 12.5 percent involve polyclinics. “Size of
the market” is the amount of money (in millions of dollars) that
citizens of Russia have paid in a year in this market of corrupt
services. For example, the courts have received $274.5 million
from citizens in one year.
The figures in Table 2 show that the traffic police account for
the greatest risk of corruption and the maximum portion of the
number of bribes. But the most substantial sums that citizens pay
every year go for health-care services and higher education. It is
not hard to conclude from the combination of characteristics that
the courts set the highest prices on corrupt services. It comes as no
surprise that 72.2 percent of respondents agree with the statement
“There are many people who do not want to go to court, because
the unofficial costs are too high”; and 78.6 percent agree with the
statement “There are many people who do not want to go to court
because they cannot count on finding justice there.”
The total yearly costs of paying bribes in all the markets of
everyday corruption add up to $2.796 billion. It needs to be em-
phasized that this estimate is not just the minimum but is also
definitely understated (not all of the markets of corruption have
been taken into account, nor all the kinds of deals in the markets
that have been examined).
The two most important markets of state services, health care
and education, were objects of special study. The conclusions of
the analysis are as follows. Corruption in secondary compulsory
education leads to discrimination against the population on the
basis of income and place of residence when it comes to the possi-
bility of obtaining good-quality services or improving their qual-
 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW 31

ity, but the situation is the worst in higher education. In particular,

alternative actions on the part of respondents who managed to solve
the problem of enrollment in an institution of higher learning in
the past ten years (their own enrollment or that of their children,
almost 60 percent of the sample) look like this:
—46.1 percent enrolled on their own, without any assistance;
—30.1 percent made use of the services of tutors or paid for
preparation courses;
—13.3 percent resorted to paying instructors or college offi-
cials to make it easier to pass the exams;
—10.6 percent wanted to enroll in an institution of higher learn-
ing, but abandoned the idea because they lacked necessary funds.
Considering that in the past few years tutoring has turned into a
disguised form of paying to enroll in an institution of higher learn-
ing for an education that is supposed to be free of charge, there are
grounds for asserting that at least 20 percent of secondary school
graduates have had to bribe their way into college. Not only that
but people from small population centers have had to resort to
paying bribes more often in order to compensate for the fact, men-
tioned above, that they have been pushed out of the sphere of good-
quality services in the system of general compulsory education. It
is important to note that 11 percent of citizens have simply had to
give up on the idea of enrolling in an institution of higher learning,
and this situation is worse the lower the family income.
Our analysis indicates that being enrolled in an institution of
higher learning now changes people’s attitude toward corruption:
it is becoming more pragmatic as corruption is perceived as a natu-
ral way to solve problems. As young people enter adult life and
confront corruption from the very beginning, they get used to re-
sorting to it to solve their problems and to overcome obstacles;
they begin to consider it a natural part of the social environment.
The laws of selection in such an environment bring it about that
those who resort to corruption find it easier to achieve tactical
success, which, among young people, is easy to perceive as strate-
gic success. In the long run, the social group from which political,
economic, military, cultural, and other elites will be recruited is
becoming a multiplier of corruption by making it more deeply
32 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW

entrenched and in this way compounding its negative consequences.

The situation is even worse when it comes to medical services.
Out of the 46 percent of respondents who indicated that they make
use of the services of ordinary polyclinics, 34 percent had con-
fronted a situation in which it became necessary to make addi-
tional informal payments (a scarcity of services or services of low
quality). Of that number, somewhat fewer than one-half have re-
sorted to payments of that kind, while the rest have either got by
with what is available (7 percent of the total sample) or have in-
stead resorted to treating themselves (12 percent). Calculated in
terms of the adult population of the country, this latter 12 percent
add up to at least 12 million citizens who are being pushed out of
the sphere of free outpatient medical services, not counting medi-
cal treatment for the children of our respondents. It is also obvious
that it is the poorest part of the population that is being pushed out
of that sphere. As people grow older, more of them are being pushed
out, and that is more common among women.
The magnitude of corruption in the courts, in education, and in
health care gives us grounds for asserting that the constitutional
rights of citizens are being violated on a mass scale in the country.
The entire range of corrupt behavior in a situation of corruption
was studied in the survey, from knowledgeability prior to a deal to
the emotional state following the deal. About 37 percent of all
respondents answered questions about this, and more than 60 per-
cent were knowledgeable to some extent about the “fee” for the
corrupt services.
Among the respondents who became involved in a corrupt deal,
20 percent did this at their own initiative. In the present survey
the rootedness of consumer corruption was verified by the influ-
ence the bribery had on the work of officials. Only 5 percent of
respondents stated that the quality of the service and the official’s
treatment of the bribe giver did not improve. In almost two-thirds
of the cases, however, “considerable improvement” was men-
tioned. Moreover, as the findings show, the most “sympathetic”
market of corrupt services was the traffic police.
Naturally, in any deal the most important thing is how success-
ful it is. Hence, only 2.2 percent of respondents said that paying
 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW 33

the bribe did not help them to solve their problem (5.8 percent
found it difficult to answer). This level of “service,” then, can be
viewed as rather high.
In Russia as a whole, then, the market of services provided in
everyday corruption is not only deeply entrenched, it is actually
functioning perfectly all over the country.

The practice of business corruption

More or less reliable assessments of the percentage of entrepre-

neurs who have been involved in corruption are rather difficult.
But the total percentage of bribe givers among respondents who
are businesspeople comes to almost 82 percent.
Our survey made a study of ordinary business corruption. The
total estimate of the amount entrepreneurs have paid to officials in
the course of a year was determined by the interval of possible
minimal estimates, with the middle standing at $33.5 billion, only
slightly less than the income portion of the 2001 budget. What the
figures show, first of all, is an actual doubling (at minimum) of the
tax burden that entrepreneurs bear, and, second, the existence of
an alternative, shadow system of taxation.
When it comes to the distribution of flows of corruption on the
different levels of ruling authority, the municipal level is in the
lead, accounting as it does for three-quarters of the market of cor-
rupt services. Ranking in second place is the regional level (20
percent of the market), while the federal branch rounds out the
“winners’ triad” with 5 percent. This result should not be surpris-
ing, because the calculations that are shown only have to do with
ordinary business corruption; serious corruption in the top upper
crust is hardly involved at all.
It turns out that stratification is even more considerable between
the branches of authority. Here, the monopoly is held by the ex-
ecutive branch and its structures. They account for 98.97 percent
of the total volume of the market in corrupt services. The remain-
ing crumbs are shared by the judicial (0.86 percent) and the leg-
islative branches (0.17 percent). The figures that are shown
indicate that the problems that entrepreneurs try to solve are not
34 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW

Table 3

Parameters of Markets of Corruption Services for Different Types of

Regulation

Avg. amts.
of bribes Volume (%)
Type of Structure Density of (thousands of corruption
market of market corruption of dollars) market

Nonfinancial control &

oversight 41.4 2.2 2,532 34.6
Fiscal, taxation 19.9 1.9 3,830 22.0
Licenses 19.9 2.3 4,686 34.2
Customs 4.4 1.6 4,024 4.9
Law enforcement 11.0 3.2 811 4.0
Other 3.5 1.5 525 0.3

Note: “Structure of the market” means the percentage of all corruption deals that
have been made in a year with respect to the particular type of regulation, from
their total number; “Density of corruption deals” means their average number per
entrepreneur in a year.

connected with laws and legal relations but with executive au-
thority. Hence, to the extent that the pattern “the more regulation
there is the more corruption there will be” is correct, entrepre-
neurs in Russia still find themselves under disastrous oppression
on the part of executive authority.
Our attention is also drawn to the fact that the actual figures
concerning the size of the markets of corruption are greatly at vari-
ance with the subjective assessments of respondents.
In connection with the fact that the executive branch has a mo-
nopoly on corruption, this question arises: “Which of the execu-
tive branch’s functions bring the greatest corruption gains?” Our
study has provided an answer, presented in Table 3.
The three leaders in volume of bribes occupy more than 90 per-
cent of the market. These include nonfinancial control and over-
sight activity, 34.6 percent; issuance of licenses, 34.2 percent; and
fiscal collection of taxes and tax control, 22.0 percent. By way of
confirming these data it is worthwhile to point out that the ques-
tionnaire included an open question: “Which body of authority
 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW 35

and regulation has caused you the most trouble in the recent past?”
These were the leaders: the tax revenue service (18.3 percent) and
the fire inspection service (5.9 percent), along with the sanitation
and epidemiology service (5.6 percent).
In our study, special attention was focused on a variety of cor-
ruption that can be called “seizure of the state,” by which was
meant ingenious attempts by entrepreneurs to influence the deci-
sions of bodies of authority on different levels and in different
branches of government. According to our findings, the percent-
age of respondents who had tried to exert an influence on at least
one body of authority came to 33.1 percent of the entire sample
(calculated over the span of two years). More likely than others to
be involved in “seizure of the state” are the representatives of sec-
tors dealing in raw materials, major monopolists, as well as busi-
nesses that have to do with ruling authority by way of benefits or
state orders. It is true, of course, that different elements of the
government are subjected to “seizure” to varying degrees. Still
another variety of corruption that we examined in the study was
the “seizure of business,” which is to say, officials’ attempts to
establish unlawful control over entrepreneurs.

The public anticorruption potential

One of the tasks of the study consisted of studying and compar-

ing groups of citizens who have either become deeply involved
in corruption or, on the other hand, who are willing to combat it
actively. On the basis of the representativeness of the whole sur-
vey, we can conclude that about 17 percent of adult Russians
share an attitude directed against corruption, an understanding
of the systemic nature of its causes, and a willingness to combat
it actively.

On the state of lawfulness in Russia

On 29 April the Council of the Federation and the Office of the

President received V. Ustinov’s report about the state of lawful-
ness in Russia and the work of the General Procuracy in 2001. In
36 RUSSIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE REVIEW

thirty-three pages the general procurator not only examined issues

in the fight against corruption and economic crimes but also gave
a very critical assessment of the work of the special services. The
report also gave a whole list of ministries and departments that, in
the Procuracy’s opinion, had allowed large-scale violations, most
of which had had criminal proceedings instituted against them.
A separate chapter of the report was devoted to corruption. In
the words of Ustinov, special services and the law enforcement
bodies, in particular the militia, possess up-to-date information on
bribe taking at the highest levels but are not even trying to combat
it: 70 percent of criminal proceedings for bribery have been insti-
tuted against doctors, educators, and staffers in economic organi-
zations, while representatives of bodies of state administration make
up a total of only 1 percent of practitioners of corruption.
Throughout 2001, procurators found more than 8,000 violations
of the law regulating state service and the fight against corruption.
Yet only 650 officials who violated the law were called to account
for disciplinary and administrative liability, and 128 criminal pro-
ceedings were instituted.

Selected by Anthony Jones

Translated by Kim Braithwaite

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