…if you have an object in view in Russia, you can always attain to it,
however impossible it may appear, by the help of the rouble.
(Joubert, p.139; 1904)
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| Junior policeman: So what is 'corruption'? Senior policeman: Slip me some money and I'll tell you... Corruption falls under the satirical pen of cartoonist Alexei Merinov |
If Russians
have earned a reputation over many years for telling lies, they have also
become infamous for corruption; the two often go hand-in-hand. When you ask
Russians about this you tend to get one of two reactions. Either they shrug
their shoulders and wonder why you’re even asking about it, so “normal” do they
consider it; or they start to get defensive and say, “Well, what about in your
country…” (This reaction is so common that it is frequently referred to as
“Whataboutism”.) Yes, you will come across instances of corruption in any
country; but this neither makes it right, nor can the situation in most Western
countries be compared to the endemic corruption in Russia, where it spreads
from the very top of society down to the simplest level.
In August 2015,
Vladimir Putin’s Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov, hit the headlines twice in a
matter of days amid corruption allegations. First, at his wedding, photographs
showed him wearing an exclusive Richard Mille watch, one of only 30 made, and
which sells for £400,000. He claimed it was a present from his wife, a former
figure-skater. Next, he went on holiday in the Mediterranean with his new wife
and a few friends on board a luxury yacht which costs £275,000 a week to rent. Apparently
Peskov has rich and generous friends.
Most of the
quotations in this chapter come from Carl Joubert’s Russia As It Really Is (1904), and Peter Pomerantsev’s Nothing is True and Everything is Possible
(2015), what I describe as the two “bookends” of this collection. I have
deliberately mixed them in together to show how on the issue of corruption little
has changed in Russia over the last century. Joubert’s first quotation sums up
the situation as he had experienced it living in Russia for nine years at the
end of the nineteenth century:
From the Baltic to the Yenisei the whole country is corrupt…every man has
his price, and is anxious to be offered it.
(Joubert, p.27; 1904)
And his
second will sound very familiar to anyone who has come up against obstructive
and apparently uncooperative Russian officials, either in Soviet times or
since.
At the Russian frontier the spirit of the country in which I had spent so
many years of my life came back to me. The official who inspected my passport
found a five-rouble note pinned to the back of it; and, in consequence, my
luggage was passed through the custom house unopened, and I was allowed to
proceed on my journey unmolested.
(Joubert, p.141; 1904)
A modern
version of this which Joubert would recognise is the traffic police. Russian
traffic police can stop any vehicle without reason. If a driver has not committed
an offence and their documents (driving licence, ownership certificate of the
car, insurance) are all in order, they may not give any bribe. But if they were
speeding, crossed a white line or have committed any other minor offence which
has not endangered other road users, they will probably slip some roubles in
with their documents to ease the procedure. A few years ago it was announced
that there was to be a crackdown on this practice; after a short time things
returned to “normal”.
Another
modern version of what Joubert found at the Customs Post concerns dealings with
the tax police. Pomerantsev, whose nine years in Russia were spent at the start
of the twenty-first century, found that they, too, wanted their cut.
…no one thought taxes would ever be spent on schools or roads. And the
tax police were much happier taking bribes than going to the trouble of
stealing money that had been paid in the orthodox fashion.
(Pomerantsev, p.53; 2015)
The very
term “tax police” may sound harmless enough in English, but the methods this
arm of the law employs are frequently tough. Armed men in balaclava helmets
bursting into offices ransacking files and taking away computers and documents
is a usual practice.
But even
corrupt officials can be sensitive souls. And the word “bribe” can sound very
ugly. Pomerantsev suggests that there are ways to make the procedure more
polite.
Paying bribes requires a degree of delicacy. Russians have more words for
“bribe” than Eskimos do for “snow”. I use my favourite formulation: “May I use
this opportunity to show a sign of my respect for you?”
(Pomerantsev, p.151; 2015)
Sadly,
Joubert’s comment about the police and their distortion of the truth is still
true more than a hundred years after he was writing.
…whereas the departure from the truth on the part of the police of other
countries is deplored, in Russia it is the normal tendency.
(Joubert, p.26; 1904)
In 2012,
during protests about allegedly rigged elections, riot police waded into
protesters – then some of the protesters were charged with “assaulting the
police” and sentenced to up to three and a half years in prison.
In his novel,
Metro, published in 1986, Alexander
Kaletski makes a valid point about payment in “bottles”.
A long time ago in the Soviet Union, the monetary unit was devalued to
bottles; one bottle equalled 3.12 roubles. The conductors know that the legal
way to travel is to buy a ticket at the station for two bottles. But if a
passenger pays them personally with one bottle, it may be illegal, but it’s
much better for them and the passenger.
(Kaletski, p.8; 1986)
This usually
refers to vodka, but in some cases it may be more specific. I discovered this
“currency” for myself as a student in Kiev in 1979. I agreed to pick up my
room-mate’s television from the repair shop. I knew that he had done a deal to
have it fixed quickly. “We agreed on the cognac,” the TV repair man told me.
Seeing my blank look, he was forced to tell me that, as I hadn’t actually
brought a bottle, I had to give him eight roubles, instead of the usual four.
(For greater clarification as to why “the bottle” has become a unit of
currency, see Chapter 20, Drink.)
The
following quotations underline the fathomless depths of Russians, particularly
officials, for taking bribes.
A rouble on either eye and a rouble across the mouth will effectually
prevent the Russian official from seeing or speaking.
(Joubert, p.79; 1904)
There are…so many ways the system wraps itself around you. My latest has
been a driving test. I would never pass, my instructor had explained, if I
didn’t pay a bribe…I protested that I wanted to learn and pass the test for
real. He explained the traffic police would fail me until I paid up.
(Pomerantsev, p.138; 2015)
The strategy of cheerleading in public and lining pockets in private came
naturally to these people.
(Harrison, p.117; 2016)
As with so
many aspects of life in Russia, corruption becomes a target for humour. A joke
which became popular in the 1990s, when people obtained and grew businesses in often
dubious circumstances concerned two oligarchs who had decided to fight things
out in court:
The night before a court case between
two oligarchs in Russia in the 1990s, one of the oligarchs visited the judge and
saying, ‘Good luck for tomorrow, I just wanted to let you know that I believe
you will make the right decision’, left an envelope on the judge’s desk. When
the judge opened it, he saw that it contained a million dollars in cash.
As he was wondering what to do about
this, the judge heard a knock at the door. Opening it, he saw the other
oligarch standing there. As he shook the judge’s hand, wishing him well for the
next day, he slipped an envelope into the judge’s pocket. After the man had
left, the judge opened the envelope to find it contained one and a half million
dollars.
The judge passed a sleepless night
wondering what to do to ensure a fair trial. As dawn broke, the solution came
to him. He dashed off to see the second oligarch and returned half a million
dollars to him.
 |
| 'The bastards are selling off the Motherland! Without us!!!' Alexei Merinov suggests that everyone wanted to get in on the theft of state property after the collapse of the USSR |
Those who succeeded in business at this time – frequently having
obtained the assets of their businesses by bribing a state official to sign
papers over to them – thought up ingenious ways to justify their new-found wealth.
The first time I interviewed Boris Berezovsky in 2001, he started to complain
about how under Putin the state ‘had stolen’ his businesses from him. When I
asked him how he had obtained these businesses in the first place, he replied
(with a look of wide-eyed innocence),
When I did my early business dealings
in Russia, old Soviet laws no longer applied and new Russian laws had not been
brought in - so I did not break the law!
When Russia was awarded the 2018 Football World Cup there were plenty
of mutterings about corrupt practices (as there were when at the same meeting
of FIFA officials the 2022 World Cup was given to Qatar). I have seen no hard
evidence that this was the case; but I do know of one English businessman who
went for a meeting with a Russian official involved with staging the World Cup
in Russia who was told before the meeting started that if he wanted to play a
part then he should transfer some money to a particular bank account.
As for the
creation of the infrastructure for such events, Pomerantsev’s comment on
unnecessary hyper-projects for those whom the Kremlin wishes to reward –
The USSR built mega-projects that made no macro-economic sense but fitted
the hallucinations of the planned economy; the new hyper-projects make no
macro-economic sense but are vehicles for the enrichment of those whose loyalty
the Kremlin needs to reward, quickly.
(Pomerantsev, p.242; 2015)
– brings
back memories of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games in early 2014. Certain wealthy
Russians (notably those who became oligarchs in the 1990’s, influencing
politics as well as running vast businesses until Putin reined in their
political activity) were ordered by the Kremlin to build various parts of the
infrastructure for the Games. The estimated cost of the Sochi Olympics was $50
billion; yet only half of this was actually spent on the infrastructure for the
Games, which suggests that these wealthy patrons were well rewarded for their 'loyalty'.
Pomerantsev’s
final comment indicates how precarious the situation is for many Russian businesses
still in Putin’s Russia.
The near mythical Russian middle class, suddenly finding it has no real
rights at all over its property, can be thrown out and relocated like serfs
under a federal whim.
(Pomerantsev,
p.129; 2015)
Plus ça change…
See also: Chapter 17: Biznes
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