Conclusion

This chapter reviews the meaning of the bribe in the late-Stalin era of the Soviet Union, focusing on how both the givers and receivers of bribes learned to use the bribe as a flexible tool for manoeuvring inside a disorganized economy and rigid bureaucratic system. Bribery emerged from a set of practices and attitudes that, in many cases, could serve certain practical functions, from distributing scarce goods and services, to establishing personalized relationships among state functionaries and citizens, to cutting through red tape.

Military Justice at the Intersection of Counterrevolution and Corruption

This chapter concludes that it was precisely in this period of postwar Stalinism that the party perfected the accusation of bribery as a weapon. Accusations of bribery became a non-violent tool to disgrace people in the post-mass-terror state. After the war, accusation of graft, one of the mundane realities of Russian life for centuries, became one of the party and procuracy’s preferred methods of targeting the leading legal institutions and other agencies and individuals. High court judges were accused not of political crimes under article 58 but of regular white-collar crimes. This change was something of an innovation in Stalinism. An accusation of corruption was an effective way of destroying a party member. The Procuracy sought evidence that would discredit judges both professionally—through accusations of selling their office, and personally—through accusations of “clannishness,” sexual “deviance,” or other moral corruption. In the absence of the pre-war practice of using of violence to punish entire categories of imagined criminals after the war, accusations of bribery served a critical purpose; not just to discredit people as trustworthy representatives of Soviet power, but also to destroy them as carriers of revolutionary truth. Bribery was a most effective charge, because its moral and political disgrace was total; it implied the corruption of the whole person. This chapter examines a bribery scandal in the Military Collegium and the military tribunals.

Informers and the State

As chapter 6 shows, in the years between the start of World War II and the death of Stalin, the Soviet regime relied on a network of secret informants in its efforts to halt what the regime considered to be a veritable epidemic of crimes against state property and the socialist economy. Alongside regular police work, the use of a vast informant network was the primary tool for uncovering the corrupt activities of Soviet officials. What were its strengths and weaknesses? Why did some people refuse to inform?

“A Grave Evil and Danger”

As chapter 5 shows, beginning in mid-1943 and accelerating in the following years, concern was building among law enforcement and party authorities that bribery was becoming more prevalent. A postwar “campaign” expressed the goal of eradicating this scourge from the Soviet landscape. Why was the bribe such a source of disquiet? Authorities expressed anxiety that its existence could erode the legitimacy of institutions and, ultimately, of the regime itself, in the eyes of the population. An antibribery drive was launched in 1946, and periodically (if briefly) re-energized over the next six years; the main, but not exclusive, target was corruption in the courts and in the branches of the state prosecutors’ office. This “campaign,” however, was seriously flawed in practice, not least of all because it was waged in complete secrecy. Why were authorities so slow to pursue bribery, and to allow public discussion of the problem? An analysis of the contentious internal conversations surrounding the postwar “struggle against bribery” provides insight into official attitudes toward the crime, and hesitation by central party officials and the legal agencies to press forward enthusiastically with measures to control it.

Introduction

This introductory chapter establishes the book’s area of interest as the culture of bribery, corruption, and black markets that took root in the Soviet Union during the important years between World War II and Stalin’s death in 1953. This study will challenge the view that there was a sharp break between the Stalin era and the “stagnation” era of Brezhnev and his immediate successors (1964–1985), which has commonly been thought of as brazenly venal, with its graft, abetted by political sclerosis and bureaucratization at all levels. Those who seek to understand the roots of the corruption that infected the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev years should look earlier, to the postwar Stalin period.

“Greetings from Sunny Georgia!”

The fourth chapter closely examines the case of a Georgian judge on the USSR Supreme Court, Levan K. Chichua, who was arrested for accepting bribes in 1949. Chichua’s story sheds light on contested notions of gift giving, bribery, and social reciprocity. The idea of the “cultural broker” as a key figure in the Soviet courts is also introduced here. Cultural brokers were individuals who had familiarity with both the Soviet legal system and local traditions and practices, and who prospered by moving back and forth between them, negotiating deals while bridging cultural gaps.

“Pick the Flowers while They’re in Bloom”

Chapter 2 shifts the focus to bribery among law enforcement and criminal justice officials. The enormous number of arrests for nonpolitical crimes, and the influx of those cases into the courts, provides context for an upsurge of deal making in the overwhelmed legal agencies. Arrests gave rise to appeals, protests, and complaints. The sheer volume of cases created opportunity for judges and prosecutors to accept illicit gifts in exchange for reducing sentences or reviewing decisions, if they were willing to take the risk. In this sense, Stalin’s crackdown on the theft of “socialist property,” profiteering, and other economic and property crimes unexpectedly increased the prospects for offering and accepting bribes. Many petitioners, having lost confidence in the official channels, turned to potentially dangerous deals with officials.

The Landscape of Bribery and Corruption in the Shadows of Stalinism

The first chapter argues that a critical turning point in the development of the patterns of bribery that typified the later Soviet era was World War II and its aftermath. The extraordinary disruption of the war and the immediate postwar years made surreptitious contacts between Soviet people and local officials more likely. The dislocation of populations; poverty; epic shortages of housing, food, and transportation; new pressures on the legal system; arbitrary state administration, and breakdowns in distribution all created conditions that were conducive to officials’ profiting from their offices. Bribery lubricated the official and unofficial economies alike in ways that helped the system function. This chapter contains a survey of tsarist and early Soviet practices of bribery, including podnoshenie and kormlenie, which persisted into the Soviet period.

The Death of a Judge

Prosecutors charged top judges serving in the supreme courts of the USSR and, the Russian, Ukrainian, and Georgian republics, as well as the Moscow City Court, and judges serving in several other important regional courts. The investigations were conducted completely in secret; neither the charges nor the associated trials were ever mentioned in the press. An exploration of these cases links an investigation of Stalinist high politics with an inquiry into the construction of narratives of corruption and deviance, and the repression of the judiciary after the war. What can the prosecution of prominent jurists tell us about the politics of fighting corruption and the methods of the regime in the late Stalin period? “The Affair of the High Courts,” as I call it, was a critical dimension of a postwar attack on the Soviet courts, carried out by the USSR Procuracy and the Central Committee Secretariat, most likely on the orders of Stalin. This chapter uncovers the origins of the scandal. The cases involved accusations of bribery against at least two dozen judges serving in the supreme courts of the RSFSR, the USSR, Ukraine, and Georgia, the Moscow City Court, and several other high courts. The Affair marks an important but unknown episode in the history of Stalinism. The chapter argues that the investigation into these cases in the High Courts should be treated as a Late Stalinist “Affair,” in some ways similar to the Leningrad Affair, the Mingrelian Affair, and the Affair of the Jewish Fascist Committee. While all these affairs have been closely examined by scholars with good access to archives, the Affair of the Soviet High Courts has not. The scandal ultimately tainted several prominent Soviet jurists, many with international reputations,

“The Word ‘Bribe’ Was Never Mentioned”

The third chapter turns to an examination of popular perceptions of the bribe, situating the practice within traditions of gift-giving to officials. Chapter 3 argues that it is productive to evaluate bribery as a type of negotiation shaped by personal and collective values, rather than simply as a contemptible act to be condemned morally. As such, the scope of actions labeled as “bribery” in this study is framed not exclusively by the Soviet criminal code but also by the outlooks, customs, social obligations, and practices of petitioners and officials. The chapter explores the micro-level of everyday interactions. How did people decide who to give gifts to? What kinds of assumptions did they bring to the negotiations? And how did petitioners and officials justify their actions, both as givers and as acceptors of gifts?