Fighting Corruption in Russia: Its Characteristics and Purpose
| Author | Leanid Kazyrytski |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663919859052 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Fighting Corruption in
Russia: Its Characteristics
and Purpose
Leanid Kazyrytski
University of Girona, Spain
Abstract
This article examines possible reasons for the inefficiency of criminal policy in the fight
against corruption in modern Russia and presents a critical analysis of the role of the
supreme state authorities responsible for the development and implementation of
criminal laws. It is noted that corruption is functional for the stable development of the
Russian authoritarian system, which is based on relations of patrimonial capitalism. The
real purpose of campaigns against corruption is emphasized, and it is argued that the
implementation of an effective anti-corruption strategy is impossible in modern Russia
since this presupposes a threat to the survival of its political and economic model.
Keywords
Anti-corruption policy, corruption, law enforcement agencies, patrimonial capitalism,
Russia
Introduction
In modern Russia, corruption affects all spheres of public li fe and is present in all
institutions and state authorities –including the Parliament, the Government and the
Presidential Administration (Moiseev and Prokuratov, 2014: 7). According to Transpar-
ency International (2017), Russia is 131st in the Corruption Perceptions Index.
The developmentof corruption in modernRussia has been influencedby both practices of
informal interaction adopted by the bureaucratic apparatus of the former Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics (USSR) (An derson, 2012; Clarke, 1995; Favarel -Garrigues, 2011;
Corresponding author:
Leanid Kazyrytski, Faculty of Law, University of Girona, 17071, Campus de Montilivi, c/ de la Universitat de
Girona 12, Girona, Spain.
Email: leanid.kazyrytski@udg.edu
Social & Legal Studies
2020, Vol. 29(3) 421–443
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663919859052
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Ledeneva, 1996/1997; Ledeneva, 1998; McMylor et al., 2000; Oleinik, 2004) and by the
globalinternalizationof delinquent behaviourpatterns duringthe period of transition fromthe
socialistic economy to the market economy in the 1990s, when the first Russian president
BorisYeltsin was in power (Anderson, 2012; Cheloukhine and King, 2007; Ledeneva,
2006; Levin and Satarov, 2000; Moiseev and Prokuratov, 2014: 68–77). However, in
contrast to previous decades, the level of corruption in modern Russia is significantly
high. According to the National Anti-Corruption Committee (NAC, 2013), the annual
volume of corruption in Russian is US$300 billion –or approximately 25% of the
country’s GDP (Nemtsov and Milov, 2010). In this respect, the level of corruption
present in all areas of social relations makes its comprehension possible if not in terms
of reification –derived from a Marxist vision (Elster, 1985: 78–82; Petrović, 1991:
463–465) –then at least from an interactionist position as a set of practices which have
completed their institutionalization process (Berger and Luckman, 1967).
As an institutionalized phenomenon, corruption in Russia has not only transformed
into a common behavioural pattern for many citizens (Barsukova, 2009; Galickiy and
Levin, 2013; Gilinskiy, 2008; Golovshhinskiy, 2013a; Satarova, 2 013; Shlapentokh,
2003) but it also strongly affects all law enforcement agencies which supposedly fight
it (Cheloukhine and King, 2007; Fisenko, 2015; Levin and Satarov, 2012; Moiseev and
Prokuratov, 2014; Romanova, 2015; Wilson et al., 2008). Corruption has been recog-
nized as one of the main problems of modern Russia at all press conferences held by
current President Putin and Prime Minister Medvedev. Since Mr Putin’s rise to power in
2000, the development and implementation of several strategies to ameliorate the issue
have been announced and diverse anti-corruption laws have been passed but no signif-
icant reduction of corruption has been registered as a result.
The list of academic studies, which aim to scrutinize corruption in Russia from
different angles of the social sciences, is rather long. In 1991–2012 alone, 1841 works
were published focusing on the study of this phenomenon to a greater or lesser extent
(Panfilova et al., 2013), quite apart from the fact that there has been significant effort
from international scholars, who in their numerous publications on corruption have
addressed ontological, etiologic and preventative issues, among others.
1
Despite the existence of such extensive academic attention, many issues concerning the
implementation of criminal policy in Russia have not received due attention from the
academic community. It is possible to note some criminological attempts to explain
the failure of criminal policy in the fight against corruption (Boskholov, 2010; Dolgova,
2015; Inshakov, 2009; Luneev, 2014; Moiseev and Prokuratov, 2014; Podolnyj and Podol-
naja, 2014; Tonkov, 2011),but in my opinion, these worksgive insufficient consideration to
the possiblerole that the supreme stateauthorities may play in minimizing the successof this
policy andthey do not adequately analyse the social–economic aspectsof the Russian model
of state power, which can impose restrictions on effective anti-corruption strategy.
According to the official view, the inability to effectively fight corruption is due to,
firstly, the incompetence of the legislative branch when it comes to devising an effective
strategy to counter the problem and, secondly, to the ineffective implementation of anti-
corruption measures by the security forces. In this sense, it is emphasized that the
Russian state, as such, maintains a strong commitment to the fight against corruption,
but the lack of legal tools and failures in the functioning of crime control agencies are the
422 Social & Legal Studies 29(3)
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