Rouille

Putin, Authoritarianism and Corruption, by “Anon”

This was published under a pseudonym on JRL here (the link may not work yet as documents are not published immediately on the site, but it is the correct link). I don't fully agree with the conclusions about Putin, but the description of corruption in Russia is vivid, pretty typical, and damning. As the author writes, it is hard to imagine a system where corruption is not a problem nibbling at a fundamentaly healthy system, but the heart of the system.


[I am very grateful to David Johnson for agreeing to include this in JRL under a pseudonym. The reason for concealing my identity is not to protect myself from any criticism over what I say, but because I make some allegations about certain officials. I am not too concerned about the officials referred to in the cases of “Miss X” and “Miss Y”, as one has been retired for several years and the other emigrated. However, “Z” still holds the same position and revealing my identity would greatly facilitate identifying “Z”. For now, I need to protect the guilty. Nonetheless, I am well aware that in polemical exchanges one needs to know who one is opposed to, quite apart from forming a judgment on that person’s own credibility. Accordingly, I am more than happy to say who I am to any reader who has a bona fide wish to know and sends an email to David, who will forward it to me. I simply don’t want my name used in a public forum. David, of course, does know who I am.]


In recent weeks both Transparency International and the World Economic Forum have published reports yet again ranking Russia as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. It is significant, given Russia’s habitual rejection of criticism by outside bodies, that President Putin has said much the same thing. Indeed, he has stated publicly that it is one of the worst dangers to Russia’s stability and territorial integrity, especially in the aftermath of the horror of Beslan in the first week of September. As more and more information becomes available about that disaster from official Russian sources, not just journalists and eyewitnesses showing that the terrorists effortlessly passed through numerous roadblocks and checkpoints in order to get themselves and their munitions to their destination, one can see what he means. Such freedom of movement is inconceivable to anybody who has endured the ceaseless “checks” by traffic police in cities like Moscow and St Petersburg, let alone in places on a war-footing such as the Caucasus, unless, and only unless, bribery played the critical role, at every single checkpoint. (Actually, though we don’t know yet for sure what happened during that dreadful period, it is possible that telefonnoye pravo (telephone orders) were employed. In this ‘system’ a senior official calls all the checkpoints ordering the people manning them to let through, unchecked, vehicles with such-and-such registration plates. This is used, for instance, by military and security personnel transporting stolen building materials to build their luxury homes).

This is reinforced by the revelation that corruption and bribery played vital roles in enabling the alleged suicide bombers get tickets, and evade detection of their explosives, on the two internal flights that were blown up the previous week, killing 90 people. Indeed, corruption on the part of members of the security and law enforcement agencies appears to have been an essential ingredient in just about every terrorism disaster that has befallen Russia in recent years. Chechen terrorists themselves have said as much.

In what must be one of the most surreal comments on the Beslan horror, former head of the KGB (and participant in the failed coup against Gorbachev in 1991), Vladimir Kryuchkov, recently stated that a nation-wide system of informers throughout the civilian population should be rebuilt, as was the case in the Soviet Union: "It is a simple, but significant fact that three trucks filled with people carrying heavy arms managed to drive through the streets of Beslan, and nobody in the town reported it. This type of thing has to be reported … We need to revive the model of the community as assisting the work of the special forces.” (Ilona Vinogradova, “The Return of the Snitch: A Despised Soviet-Era Custom Enjoys a New Vogue After Beslan”, Russia Profile, November 3, 2004, see JRL 8349). Kryuchkov appears to be unaware of his own hideous sense of irony. To whom exactly should the careless citizens of Beslan have reported their suspicions the very law-enforcement agencies that were taking money or had been ordered to direct the terrorists on to their target? He also seems to have overlooked the fact that most of the able-bodied citizens of that town were taking their children to school, such as the 1,300 or so who were at the doomed School Number 1. There probably weren’t many people out on the streets looking for suspicious vehicles.

This recognition of the cancer of corruption within the body politic by President Putin is something that has been overlooked by many of his critics, including the 115 distinguished Western politicians, academics, and others, who recently signed an open letter to the heads of NATO and EU states condemning Putin’s proposals to reform the Russian electoral processes in favour of direct appointments of regional leaders and Duma representation on the basis of party lists. True, on the surface, these steps look like reverses for the Russian democratization process, but I do not believe this is a balanced and comprehensive assessment.

Corruption, and its handmaidens, incompetence and cynicism, are crucial elements in Russian public life and failure to appreciate what this means leads to woefully mistaken expectations, to say nothing of totally inappropriate advice from even well-meaning foreign pundits and politicians. In most developed societies and economies in the West, corruption is a deplorable fact of life to greater or lesser extent, but the core system of governance and administration is, nonetheless, based on rules and procedures that are sound, that work, and are accepted by society as a whole. Corruption in the West is something that attacks a basically healthy system, somewhat as bugs attack healthy organisms. In Russia this is not the case. The system itself is a Potemkin façade, resembling superficially, and based upon lip-service to, internationally standard principles but, in practice, utterly removed from them. The system itself is corrupt and its underlying principles are those of corruption. It is not just a few hundred or thousand policemen and security agency personnel who are corrupt. This disease is everywhere.

A revealing episode that is relevant to this is included in Strobe Talbot’s The Russia Hand, his account of the Clinton-Yeltsin relationship. Talbot tells how he was with then Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov the night Russian troops made their dash to seize the airport at Pristina in Kosovo, thereby triggering the most dangerous confrontation between NATO and the USSR/Russia since the Cuban missile crisis some forty years earlier. Down the corridor from Ivanov’s office, Talbot writes, they could hear the sounds of drunken generals shouting and smashing vodka glasses. It was at that chilling moment, he says, that the American side realized that the Russian Government had lost control of the military. It may not be immediately obvious how this is related to the issue of corruption in public administration. (Further, it is true that this episode took place during Yeltsin’s chaotic period in office, though the determined resistance to Putin’s demands for military reform suggests that little effective control has been re-established since those days). But there is a connection. The military is notoriously corrupt, with well-documented cases of hazing of first-year conscripts by their second-year elders, often resulting in death, suicide and desertion, to say nothing of severe physical and psychological trauma, all made possible by the indifference and abnegation of responsibility by demoralized, underpaid and poorly housed officers. Further, senior officers use conscripts, together with stolen materials, to build themselves large dachas and other facilities. At its worst, it is widely alleged that Russian military personnel sell weapons to, among others, Chechen terrorists, a totally extraordinary and evil practice, if only because this directly leads to the deaths of the traffickers’ own troops. Most people might also call this treasonable behaviour. In such an unchecked corrupt institution, it is therefore not difficult to see why the military leadership should make its own decisions on such matters as taking Pristina airport it is not accountable, and has never been made accountable, to civilian political authority, a crucial characteristic of public sector corruption generally.

But it is not just in such high-profile matters (anti-terrorism, military operations, etc) that corruption flourishes. It is everywhere. I have spent the last nine years living in Russia, mostly employed as a consultant working on a number of projects supported by Tacis, the EU’s technical assistance program for Russia and the so-called Newly Independent States of the FSU. My counterpart organizations the local bodies who were supposed to benefit from the inputs of Russian and EU advisers, like me were various departments within the regional administration of one of Russia’s 89 regions and, later, a section within a federal ministry in Moscow.

During my regional experiences, the then governor of the region was known to be utterly corrupt, in terms of using his position solely for the accumulation of huge personal wealth, was publicly a foul-mouthed drunkard, and was credibly accused of (but never charged with) having ordered the murders and attempted murders of opponents and critics, including regional parliamentary deputies and journalists. Two of his senior deputy governors were arrested by Russian law enforcement agencies for serious financial crimes (theft, embezzlement, smuggling, etc) involving many millions of dollars. Both of them were released and one of them is now in hiding abroad, on Interpol’s wanted list. More recently, under a different governor, another deputy governor was arrested after being secretly filmed accepting a $250,000 bribe to issue a licence to import cars. Reportedly, his initial defence was to claim that he would be getting “only” $50,000 the rest, he said, was intended for his boss.

The use of high public office for personal gain is widespread throughout Russia in municipal, regional and federal bodies of administration. This is why large sums of money change hands to ensure that so-and-so is appointed (or “elected”) to such-and-such a position, where the payback or return on investment - is enormous. Consequently, it is not surprising that middle-level and junior public servants are frequently inept and unqualified for their posts being, rather, part of the overall food chain, protecting their superiors from exposure and being rewarded with a share of the spoils. Nepotism is rampant, as one would expect in a culture where family and personal loyalties have always been valued very highly and certainly more than merit, especially where corrupt and criminal behaviour is the norm. Two examples: When hiring Russian staff for one project team, I wanted to recruit an agricultural specialist. My counterpart helpfully proposed a Miss X as being “ideal”. Miss X turned out to be the official’s daughter who was just graduating from school and whose knowledge of agriculture, as far as I could ascertain, was confined to assisting her granny pickle tomatoes grown at the dacha. The counterpart would not speak to me for two months (thus stopping any possibility of project progress) when I turned down her application.

Later, another official proposed that I take on Miss Y as an interpreter for my EU consultants. I said we already had two, thank you very much, but the official insisted that the entire project would be in danger of being cancelled if I did not comply with this “reasonable” request. When I discovered that Miss Y spoke only Russian I asked how she was supposed to be an interpreter. “You will pay for her to have lessons,” was the answer. Miss Y was, of course, another family connection. On this particular poker hand, I saw that my counterpart was not bluffing, so I compromised. I offered to pay her half the normal minimum rate, saying untruthfully that it was the maximum possible (my lie was fortunately undiscovered) on condition I never saw the woman anywhere near our office. The deal was accepted.

Throughout three years on this particular project, during which time my Russian and foreign colleagues produced over thirty detailed sets of recommendations covering such issues as how to set up an export promotion agency, how to develop international aviation services, how to develop telecommunications infrastructure and services, how to carry out regional legislative reform to improve the investment climate and much, much more, we were treated largely with indifference bordering and often crossing over into contempt and, on several occasions, open abuse. The reason for this was simple. Despite the high standard of our work and we used very experienced practitioners to advise on how to achieve change (including a former government minister, an ex-chief executive of successful airline start-ups, professional development bankers, active businessmen and so forth) nobody in the administration was the slightest bit interested as there was no direct pay-off to the officials. Our reports were ignored and almost certainly never read (yes, they were written in Russian) as the key people were always sick, on leave, traveling on business or just too busy to meet and discuss the issues. However, they were not too busy to demand that we provide computers (highly mobile and saleable items) or, in one case, buy 100 subscriptions to a propaganda newspaper produced by the regional administration, showing what a wonderful chap the then governor was. When I pointed out that there were less than ten of us in my project team and that, anyway, this rag was available free from every kiosk in the region, I was told that my failure to comply with this request would be considered a hostile act. I refused and it was.

In Moscow, working with a part of a major ministry it was a bit more subtle. It was formally disallowed for my colleagues and I to meet any of the decision-makers (deputy ministers upwards) and we were therefore compelled to “work” with a middle-level public servant, whom I shall call “Z”. We were trying to advise the counterpart on a number of key strategic issues relevant to Russia’s overall reform program. We made numerous written proposals on these serious and complex issues. Our counterpart never read or even acknowledged receipt of our proposals and was always too busy to meet us to discuss them (or sick, or on leave, or traveling on business the standard excuses to avoid meetings). In part this was due to the ever more apparent fact that “Z” did not have the technical skills to understand the issues we were addressing and in part because “Z” was not in a position of authority sufficient to voice opinions (hence our frustration at being denied access to those who would understand and who could make decisions).

However, this did not stop “Z” from ordering an assistant to call us (but not to write to us) suggesting that “Z” had moved into a new office and, therefore, it would be appropriate if we would buy a new television as a form of congratulation, or pay for a New Year’s party for “Z’s” staff (at a cost of $3,700), or make other demands of a similar nature. When my EU colleague and I refused to do this and demanded that we had meetings to discuss the matters that we were actually employed to deal with, our counterpart complained to the European Commission that there had been a complete “breakdown of trust” between us and insisted that we be “replaced”. The Commission immediately agreed and so my EU colleague and I were unceremoniously dumped from our project. (Interestingly, this was completely legal, as I have just lost a case for unfair dismissal which I brought to the European Ombudsman’s Office). We were not, however, replaced as our ex-counterpart objected to subsequent EU candidates proposed for our posts. The role of “EU Adviser” is now filled by a Ukrainian, which must be an encouraging sign to the EU-hopefuls in Kiev. Our erstwhile Russian colleagues now work as effective subordinates to “Z”, funded by the Commission, instead of acting as independent experts advising the Government on policy and related issues. They do the work that the counterpart’s civil servants are self-confessedly unable to do themselves, that is, mostly pushing paper around and completely abandoning any strategic and policy analysis. This had been explicitly forbidden in our original terms of reference, drawn up by the Commission and formally agreed by the counterpart, but appears now to have been tacitly accepted as the price for continuing “cooperation”.

There are hundreds and thousands of foreign (and Russian) consultants and experts, funded by Tacis and other bodies, who can tell similar or worse stories. Why does this nonsense and waste of money continue? There are two reasons. One is political: it is better to have the appearance of cooperating with Russia, even though the results are far below expectation, than to say openly that Russia is incapable of absorbing cooperation and assistance effectively. Upper Volta with nuclear weapons (plus oil, gas, timber, consumer markets, etc) is important. Upper Volta without them can safely be reprimanded and sanctioned, if appropriate. The second reason is that it would be an appalling loss of face to admit that billions of dollars of assistance have largely achieved nothing (the purpose of Tacis is to support the transition to democracy and a market economy. In Russia, after more than ten years, there is not much sign of success in either area, at least, not much that can be directly attributed to foreign assistance). So everyone plays the modern variant of the old Soviet game “you pretend to work and we will pretend to pay you.” In the new variant, we work and we get paid, but nothing happens.

Becoming a public servant is a licence to extract large sums of money from the populace and business community. In other words, public service is not a vocation or a well-respected career offering an acceptable material reward (let alone ‘job satisfaction’) in exchange for fulfilling the public sector’s social contract with the citizenry. Rather, it is an opportunity to join a cynical kleptocracy that preys on society. Such opportunities command entrance fees. And, by the way, let us not underestimate the direct, formal rewards to public servants. They do, indeed, earn low salaries, even by Russian standards, but there are many perks end-of-year cash bonuses allocated on a seniority and loyalty basis, apartments, dachas, cars, holidays, foreign travel and much more. In other words, spare no tears for the allegedly underpaid Russian civil servant. He or she as long as appropriate support for the boss is maintained does okay. Paying public servants higher wages will not eradicate corruption. The system is too diseased. (However, it is interesting to note that public servants’ salaries have, in the last few months, been increased by a multiple of up to five times during the same period when benefits for disadvantaged members of society, including war veterans, victims of Chernobyl, pensioners, etc, are having their free transport, medical and other benefits replaced by cash payments, widely considered to be worth a great deal less than the implicit value of the benefits).

All this breeds and sustains an atmosphere of utter cynicism towards, in particular, the population, which is why, in return, the Russian population has no trust whatsoever in the system of Russian public administration. And since competence in a particular discipline within the public service is not required (extracting money and keeping superiors happy are the key survival skills) no wonder that so many Russian public servants have no idea about the issues they are formally responsible for. This is also why nothing works properly, be it security, economic development or whatever.

I believe that President Putin is well aware of the fact that this virus of corruption is endemic throughout the entire country and that public administration is utterly and profoundly incapable of dealing with its real responsibilities. Thus, his proposal to appoint governors, who will be directly and continuously answerable to him (instead of letting drunken gangsters, or the puppets of powerful regional business/criminal cliques, buy election once every four years and spend the interim period looting their regions), and trying to develop a party system, instead of enabling rich individuals to buy their way into the Duma (where they can and do accept or give bribes to ensure appropriate legislation is enacted or blocked in favour of their corporate backers’ interests), may well be a practical move towards cleaning Russia up. Haranguing, harassing and humiliating President Putin for rolling back democracy is missing the point. There is no real democracy in Russia for him to trample on and hasn’t been since Yeltsin ordered tanks to fire on the democratically elected Duma in 1993, an act which the West applauded, or at least tolerated, in a post-Cold War variant of the “better dead than red” school of applied democratic theory.

Putin’s course of action is not without dreadful risk, of course (what if he was succeeded and his powers inherited - by someone like Zhirinovsky, say?), and it is also true that his actions do indeed represent a further tightening of the noose, on top of his other authoritarian moves against the media, NGOs and so forth. Nonetheless, given his background in the Soviet-era KGB and then as head of the successor FSB, it is hardly surprising that his training and experience tells him to resort to increased authoritarianism rather than the anarchic Yeltsin approach. It is not as if Russian history offers alternative and better models of behaviour.

Is there anything the West can do to help? I am not sure that there is, since western countries have not within living memory had to root out endemic corruption on the scale that Putin has to face. We simply don’t know how to do it (and anybody who thinks that measures like increasing public servants’ pay, or ensuring that the law is enforced effectively, will do the trick is living in cloud-cuckoo land). Furthermore, there are, of course, many fine, talented and dedicated public servants (both officials and elected politicians). But every barrel seems to contain a number of very rotten apples and the good guys are sidelined, neutralized or, in more extreme cases, fired or killed. They are unable to fight the virus, so what can we, the generally unwelcome outsiders, do?

Putin’s greatest fear, as he has often stated publicly, is the disintegration of the Russian Federation. He saw how easy it was for the USSR to disappear almost overnight and knows that present-day Russia is equally if not more vulnerable. Such a scenario would be extremely dangerous for the rest of the world, whatever about the consequences for Russia and its people. And the greatest weakness of Russia, and hence threat to its future survival, is the rottenness of the state apparatus built on corruption. Even if there is not much we can do actively to assist, there is, perhaps, one thing we could refrain from. When Putin introduces more authoritarian measures, we are entitled to express our concerns about the possible consequences. But we should stop the knee-jerk instantaneous condemnations that make no effort to understand where he is coming from and what he is trying to achieve. We should call off the attacks on the one Russian leader in the last eighty years who is trying to put an end to this potentially fatal disease, because in this fight, as in the greater war against terror, we should all be on the same side.