Topic 2. Genesis of corruption and bribery.
LECTURE 2
2.1. History of the emergence and development of corruption.
2.2. Characteristics of corruption relations in Russia.
2.3. The current state of corruption and bribery in Russia.
History has been familiar with the phenomenon of corruption for a very long time. Aristotle also said: “The most important thing in any political system is to arrange things through laws and other regulations in such a way that it is impossible for officials to make money.” Bribes are also mentioned in the ancient Roman 12 tables; in Ancient Rus', Metropolitan Kirill condemned “bribery” along with witchcraft and drunkenness. Under Ivan IV the Terrible, a clerk was executed for the first time for receiving more than his allotted roast goose with coins.
The Russian Code on Criminal and Correctional Punishments of 1845 (as amended in 1885, in force in Russia until October 1917) already differentiated the composition of receiving a bribe - bribery and extortion.
Also, C. Montesquieu noted: “... it is already known from the experience of centuries that every person who has power is inclined to abuse it, and he goes in this direction until he reaches the limit assigned to him.” Accordingly, manifestations of corruption are found both in states with totalitarian and democratic regimes, in economically and politically underdeveloped countries and superpowers. In principle, there are no countries that could claim exceptional chastity.
For the first time, civilized humanity encountered the phenomenon of corruption in the most ancient times; later we find its signs essentially everywhere.
For example, one of the oldest mentions of corruption is found in the cuneiform writings of ancient Babylon. As follows from deciphered texts dating back to the middle of the third millennium BC, even then the Sumerian king Urukagin faced a very acute problem of suppressing the abuses of judges and officials who extorted illegal rewards.
The rulers of ancient Egypt faced similar questions. Documents discovered during archaeological research also indicate massive manifestations of corruption in Jerusalem in the period after the Babylonian captivity of the Jews in 597 - 538. before the Nativity of Christ.
The theme of corruption is also found in biblical texts. Moreover, many authors speak bitterly about its presence and harm. For example, in one of the books of the Bible, the Book of Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, the father instructs his son: “Do not be a hypocrite before the lips of others and be attentive to your mouth... Let not your hand be stretched out to receive... Do no evil, and it will not befall you evil; move away from untruth and it will evade you... Do not strive to become a judge, lest you be powerless to crush untruth, lest you ever fear the face of a strong man and cast a shadow over your righteousness...” It is not difficult to notice that the very nature of the instructions indicates that the biblical society was quite familiar with the facts of bribery of judges and dishonest justice.
The ancient era did not escape the manifestations and flourishing of corruption. Its destructive influence was one of the reasons for the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Later periods of Western European history were also accompanied by the development of corrupt relations. At the same time, their presence in the life and affairs of society was reflected not only in historical documents, but also in many works of art by such masters as Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales), Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, An Eye for an Eye), Dante (“Hell” and “Purgatory”). So, seven centuries ago, Dante placed corrupt officials in the darkest and deepest circles of Hell. History explains his dislike of corruption by the author's political considerations, for Dante considered bribery to be the reason for the fall of the Italian republics and the success of his political opponents.
Many famous Western thinkers have paid a lot of attention to the study of manifestations of corruption. It seems that Niccolo Machiavelli explored its origins very comprehensively in this sense. It is characteristic that many of his views on this problem are very relevant today. Suffice it to recall his figurative comparison of corruption with consumption, which is difficult to recognize at first, but is easier to treat, and if it is neglected, then “although it is easy to recognize, it is difficult to cure.”
1.2. Characteristics of corruption relations in Russia.
Russia, in terms of the presence of corruption relations, has not been and is not an exception to the general rule. Their formation and development also has a long history. In particular, one of the first written mentions of promises as illegal remuneration to princely governors dates back to the end of the 14th century. The corresponding norm was enshrined in the so-called Dvina Charter Charter (the Charter Charter of Vasily I), and later clarified in the new edition of the Pskov Judgment Charter. It can be assumed that these sources only stated the existence of such acts, which clearly took place much earlier than their official normative consolidation.
The prevalence of extortion (bribery) in Russia was so significant that according to the Decree of Peter the Great of August 25, 1713 and later “legalizations,” the death penalty was determined as a punishment for extortionists. However, she did not frighten embezzlers too much. To imagine at least the approximate scale of the corruption of Russian officials, it is enough to recall such historical characters as the clerks and clerks of the royal orders of the pre-Petrine era and the clerks of the later periods, the very thieving associate of Peter the Great, Prince A.D. Menshikov, who was executed under Peter for embezzlement and extortion of the Siberian Governor Gagarin, embezzlers and bribe-takers of the highest level from the inner circle of the last Russian emperor.
Very curious in this regard is the “Note of the Highest Established Committee to Consider the Laws on Extortion and the Provisions of a Preliminary Conclusion on Measures to Eliminate This Crime,” sent to Emperor Nicholas I, dating back to August 1827. This document examines with exceptional scrupulousness the reasons for the spread of corruption in the state apparatus, provides a classification of forms of corrupt behavior, and proposes measures to counter this phenomenon.
In particular, among the main reasons are mentioned “the rarity of people who are truly just,” “a penchant for covetousness, constantly irritated by the very structure of life and not constrained by any real obstacles,” the low level of salaries of officials who “... do not teach any means for a decent maintenance ... they do not give the slightest opportunity, after satisfying the daily needs of life, to devote something to raising children, to providing first aid when they are assigned to the service, or even to a small reward for daughters when they are married off.” This contributes to the fact that the official uses the power entrusted to him by the Government “in favor of selfish interests, violates in all possible cases those laws that are entrusted to his custody, in a word, extortion is encouraged.”
The proposed list of forms of corrupt behavior, in particular bribery, is also interesting. They “are different: gifts, promises, promises, offers of services from their own patrons, seductions of all kinds; guess the inclinations of the Judges, look for their acquaintances and connections; If they don’t manage to appease one of them personally, they try to bribe him into a relative, a friend, a benefactor. Knowledge of man reveals to us that in those cases where private benefits flow, greater or lesser abuse is inseparably connected with them.”
As for measures to combat the corruption of officialdom, it was proposed to put in first place “the speedy publication of a complete systematic set of laws, which for each branch of State Administration should serve as a uniform guide in the production and resolution of cases without exception”; “the repeal of laws of those that obviously contribute to deliberate delays, oppression and forced bribes”; “the establishment in all parts of the State Administration of salaries that would be somewhat commensurate with the needs of existence in the rank in which someone is serving, and thereby would stop employees from attempting to arbitrarily satisfy these needs to the extreme, by extortion” ; “establishing fair proportionality in punishments” so that “the harm or sensitivity of punishment exceeds the benefit acquired from the crime,” and “the sensitivity of punishment for a repeated crime exceeds not only the benefit acquired through the crime, but also all the benefits that could be acquired through all repeated crimes in a person in whom vice has become a habit”; “the strictest, not just on paper, but in fact monitoring the exact execution of the Highest Decrees that protect the judiciary from the influence of the Commanders-in-Chief in different parts of the State Administration”; “the introduction of transparency in court proceedings, and in general in the administration of the clerical service, excluding only those cases that, due to their particular importance, will be excluded from this by the Supreme Government.”
However, all these good recommendations, in principle, remained unrealized, and the bureaucracy sank more and more into the abyss of corruption. It is no coincidence that the morals that reigned among the bureaucrats, including acts of corruption and their participants, were vividly reflected not only in historical documents, but also in the works of the great Russian writers N.V. Gogol, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, I.I. Lazhechnikov, A.V. Sukhovo-Kobylin, A.P. Chekhov and many others.
Since ancient times, there have been three forms of corruption in Russia: honors, payment for services and promises. Offerings in the form of honor expressed respect for the one receiving it. The respectful meaning of “honor” is also manifested in the Russian custom of presenting a respected person, and especially high authorities, with bread and salt. But already in the 17th century. “honor” increasingly took on the meaning of a permitted bribe. And, of course, bribery in Russia flourished on the basis of the widespread practice of offering “honor” to officials.
Another form of donations to officials is associated with the costs of conducting and processing the affairs themselves. The income of officials in the form of payments for conducting and processing cases was taken into account when determining their salaries: if the order had a lot of cases from which they could “feed”, then they were paid less salary. That is, the practice of “feeding from
The third form of corruption is promises, i.e. payment for a favorable resolution of cases, for committing illegal acts. Most often, “promises” were expressed in overpayments for services, for conducting and processing cases, and therefore the border between the two forms of corruption was blurred and barely distinguishable.
It is enough to recall the vivid images of degenerated Soviet employees created by V. Mayakovsky, I. Ilf and E. Petrov, M. Zoshchenko and other authors. And this despite the fact that Lenin considered bribery one of the most dangerous relics and demanded the most severe, sometimes “barbaric,” as he put it, measures to combat it. In a letter to a member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Justice Kursky, he demanded: “It is necessary to immediately, with demonstrative speed, introduce a bill that penalties for bribery (extortion, bribery, summary for a bribe, etc., etc.) should be no less than ten years in prison and, in addition, , ten years of forced labor." The severity of the measures in the fight against bribery was explained by the fact that the Bolsheviks viewed it not only as a shameful and disgusting relic of the old society, but also as an attempt by the exploiting classes to undermine the foundations of the new system. One of the directives of the RCP (b) directly noted that the enormous spread of bribery, closely connected with the general lack of culture of the bulk of the population and the economic backwardness of the country, threatens to corrupt and destroy the apparatus of the workers' state.
However, despite the severity of legal measures against bribe-takers, it was not possible to eradicate this phenomenon, and its main causes were not eliminated, many of which were outlined in the above-mentioned note to the Russian Emperor Nicholas I. Even during the totalitarian rule of I. Stalin's virus of corruption was not exterminated, although, of course, it should be recognized that the model of Stalin's quasi-socialism outwardly seemed the least corrupt. However, we should not forget that totalitarianism, based on political and economic terror, also appeared outwardly in other countries as being slightly corrupt (a classic example is Hitler's Germany), which in fact was not true.
Even today, not only the elderly, but also middle-aged Russians remember the massive facts of extortion and bribery for obtaining public housing, for allocating scarce industrial and food products to trading enterprises and selling customers “through pull”, for admission to prestigious universities, for business trips abroad and things like that, which at one time were widely reported by people and even the press. And this despite the fact that nominally bribery was punished very strictly - up to the highest penalty under criminal law: the death penalty.
The conclusion about the widespread prevalence of corruption at the end of the era of socialism is allowed to come not only from the materials of trials and the press of the 1970-1980s, but also from a study of this problem conducted by one of them in 1990 in a number of regions of Russia and some union republics of the then existing USSR . Its results indicate that various types of corrupt behavior, including criminally punishable and therefore most dangerous forms, were already inherent in almost all union, republican, regional and regional state and party bodies, not to mention local ones. The most affected in this regard were the structures that provided financial and logistical support to business entities, foreign economic relations, organizing and controlling the spheres of commodity distribution and social support for the population. Moreover, if it was no longer possible to remain silent about these phenomena, they were presented as certain costs of the functioning of government bodies or individual facts that did not arise from the existing system.
All this created very favorable conditions for the further introduction of corruption into public relations during the liberalization of economic and socio-political conditions in the country at the turn of the 1990s. And, ultimately, it led to the fact that in recent years, even with continued criminal liability, bribes began to be taken, essentially, openly. The results of a study conducted already in 1999-2000 show, in particular, that with a relatively stable total number of persons convicted of bribery over the past 12-15 years, today only one in two to two and a half thousand can be brought to justice for this act persons who committed this crime (i.e., more than twenty times less than in the late 1980s and early 1990s). This essentially, if not formally, then practically decriminalized bribery as a type of crime. It is interesting that of those convicted today for bribery, up to half are representatives of law enforcement agencies, which indicates a high degree of corruption of those who, in theory, the authorities and the population should count on as the main support in countering offenders.
So, as we said above, corruption has been known since ancient times. Mention of this phenomenon is found in works on the art of government, religious and legal literature of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Judea, India and China - in all centers of ancient Eastern civilizations.
According to a number of researchers, the first mention of corruption is contained in the famous Laws of the Babylonian king Hammurabi:
Ҥ5. If a judge examined the case, made a decision and prepared a document with a seal, and then changed his decision, then this judge should be convicted of changing the decision that he made, and the amount of claim that was available in this case should be paid twelvefold; Moreover, in the assembly he should be driven from his judicial seat, and he should not return and sit with the judges in court.
The “Teaching of the King of Heracleopolis to his son Merikara” (Egypt, 22nd century BC) states: “Elevate your nobles so that they act according to your laws. He who is rich in his house is impartial; he is the lord of things and has no need.”
The Old Testament repeatedly mentions cases of corruption that took place during different periods of the existence of the Israeli state: at the dawn of its history, in the 11th century. BC, when the sons of the judge the prophet Samuel “turned aside for greed and took gifts, and judged wrongly” (1 Sam. 8:3), and much later, in the era of the divided kingdom. Prophet Amos in the 8th century. BC denounced the Israeli judges: “you oppress the judiciary, you take bribes, but you drive out the poor who seeks justice from the gates” (Amos 5:12).
The ancient Indian treatise on the art of government, “Arthashastra” (IV century BC), emphasizes that the most important task facing the king is the fight against embezzlement. The treatise lists 40 ways to steal government property and draws the disappointing conclusion that it is easier to guess the path of birds in the sky than the tricks of cunning officials. “Just as it is impossible to determine whether fish swimming in it drink water, it is impossible to determine whether officials assigned to affairs are appropriating property.” The main means of combating embezzlement is surveillance. The informer received a share of property confiscated from a person convicted of an official crime.
In ancient Roman law, there was a term “corrumpere”, which had up to fifteen meanings, including “to upset affairs”, “to waste a fortune”, “to distort the meaning”, “to falsify results”, “to distort reality”, “to bribe someone”.
In the Roman Laws of the Twelve Tables (451–450 BC) it is recorded: “Will you really consider the decree of the law severe, punishing with death the judge or mediator who was appointed during the trial [to try the case] and was convicted of that they accepted a monetary bribe in [this] case?” (Table IX. 3).
In general, the term “corruption” in Ancient Rome meant an illegal act committed by a judge or other official in the legal process. Subsequently, this concept began to be applied to various abuses by officials.
The term had a similar, and at the same time broader meaning in ancient Greece, where corruption was understood as “damaging the stomach with bad food”, “upsetting affairs”, “wasting wealth”, “bringing morals into decline”, “setting fire to property”, “ destroy freedom”, “seduce women”, “corrupt the youth”, “distort the meaning”, “falsify the results”, “distort reality”. This approach to defining corruption in ancient Greece indicates the global significance attached to this phenomenon. Perhaps corruption was equated to ethical categories, on a par with good, evil, justice, etc.
During the Middle Ages, corruption was defined in a canonical context - as seduction, the temptation of the devil. Therefore, the term “corruptibilitas” was used, meaning the frailty of man, the susceptibility of the human personality to sinful temptations.
Great thinkers of the 15th–18th centuries paid serious attention to the study of corruption. Thus, the Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) compared corruption to a disease that is initially difficult to recognize but easy to treat, and later easy to recognize but almost impossible to treat.
The English materialist philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) defined corruption as “the root from which flows at all times and under all temptations contempt for all laws.” The English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561–1626) wrote about corruption: “thinking that they could buy everything with their wealth, many have first of all sold themselves.” The French thinker and historian Francois Voltaire wrote that “great sorrows always turn out to be the fruit of unbridled greed.” Thus, it was in the XV–XVIII centuries. the concept of corruption began to take on a modern meaning.
Bribery is mentioned in Russian chronicles of the 13th century. The first legislative restriction of corruption activities in Russia was implemented during the reign of Ivan III. His grandson Ivan IV the Terrible first introduced the death penalty as a punishment for excessive bribery.
Under Peter I, corruption and the tsar’s brutal fight against it became widespread in Russia. A typical episode is when, after many years of investigation, the Siberian governor M.P. was exposed for corruption and hanged. Gagarin. Literally three years later, Chief Fiscal Nesterov, the one who exposed Gagarin, was quartered for bribery.
Throughout the reign of the Romanov dynasty, corruption was a significant source of income for both minor civil servants and dignitaries. For example, the Elizabethan chancellor Bestuzhev-Ryumin received 7 thousand rubles a year for his service to the Russian Empire, and 12 thousand rubles for his services to the British crown (as an “agent of influence”).
In the Russian Empire, corruption was closely intertwined with favoritism. Numerous episodes of corrupt activities of the favorite of Peter I, Prince Alexander Menshikov, are known, for which the latter was punished by the tsar more than once.
The term “corruption” was periodically used in the works of Russian publicists of the 19th century, but the concept of “corruption” was introduced into Russian law by A.Ya. Estrin in his work “Bribery,” which was published as part of the work of the criminal law circle at St. Petersburg University only in 1913.
Of the latest pre-revolutionary episodes, in addition to G. Rasputin, it makes sense to mention the ballerina M. Kshesinskaya and Grand Duke Alexei Mikhailovich, who together, for huge bribes, helped factory owners receive military orders during the First World War.
The change in government structure and form of government in October 1917 did not eliminate corruption as a phenomenon and the need to combat it. The Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR "On Bribery" dated May 8, 1918 provided for criminal liability for bribery (imprisonment for a term of at least 5 years, combined with forced labor for the same period). Subsequently, liability for bribery was established by the Criminal Code of the RSFSR of 1922, 1926, 1960. These laws regulated liability for receiving a bribe, giving a bribe, mediation in bribery and provoking a bribe.
The history of the struggle of the Soviet government against corruption is characterized by a number of specific features. Firstly, corruption, both as a concept and as a phenomenon, was not recognized in official regulatory documents and practical activities. Instead of this definition, the terms “bribery”, “abuse of official position”, “connivance”, etc. were used.
Secondly, the reasons for the occurrence of this phenomenon were associated with the conditions inherent in bourgeois society. For example, in the closed letter of the CPSU Central Committee “On strengthening the fight against bribery and theft of people’s property” dated March 29, 1962, it was stated that bribery is “a social phenomenon generated by the conditions of an exploitative society.” The October Revolution eliminated the root causes of bribery, and “the Soviet administrative and managerial apparatus is an apparatus of a new type.” The reasons for corruption were listed as shortcomings in the work of party, trade union and government bodies, primarily in the field of education of workers.
A note from the Department of Administrative Bodies of the CPSU Central Committee and the CPC under the CPSU Central Committee on strengthening the fight against bribery in 1975–1980, dated May 21, 1981, states that in 1980 more than 6 thousand cases of bribery were identified, which is 50% more than in 1975. The emergence of organized groups is described (for example, more than 100 people in the USSR Ministry of Fisheries, headed by the deputy minister). It talks about the facts of conviction of ministers and deputy ministers in the republics, about other union ministries, about bribery and merging with criminal elements of employees of control bodies, about bribery and bribery in the prosecutor's office and courts.
The main elements of crimes are listed: release of scarce products; allocation of equipment and materials; adjustment and reduction of planned targets; appointment to responsible positions; concealment of fraud. The reasons include serious omissions in personnel work, bureaucracy and red tape when considering legitimate requests of citizens, poor handling of complaints and letters from citizens, gross violations of state, planning and financial discipline, liberalism towards bribe-takers (including in court verdicts). ), poor work with public opinion. It is reported that leading party workers (level - city and district committees) were punished for connivance with bribery. It is proposed to adopt a resolution of the Central Committee.
Thirdly, the hypocrisy of the authorities, which contributed to the acceleration of corruption, was manifested in the fact that the highest Soviet party officials were practically untouchable. Rare exceptions include the cases of Tarada and Medunov from the highest regional leadership in Krasnodar, and the case of Shchelokov. When Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade Sushkov was convicted of bribes and abuses, the KGB and the Union Prosecutor General's Office reported to the Central Committee about the side results of the investigation: Minister Patolichev systematically received expensive items made of gold and precious metals, rare gold coins as gifts from representatives of foreign companies. The matter was hushed up.
Fourthly, only representatives of this apparatus fought against corruption among the state apparatus. This led to two consequences: those who fought were organically unable to change the root causes that gave rise to corruption, since they went back to the most important conditions for the existence of the system; the fight against corrupt officials often developed into a fight against competitors in the markets for corrupt services.
Thus, corruption undoubtedly existed in the USSR, but it was distinguished by a number of features. Historian F.I. Razzakov in his book “Corruption in the Politburo: the case of the “Red Uzbek”” writes that “... in the USSR there was the first (administrative type of corruption) - that is, the provision of illegal or legal, but only for a select few, benefits and benefits for the purpose of obtaining benefits and without changes to existing laws and regulations.”
The entire post-war period, during and after Perestroika, the growth of corruption occurred against the backdrop of a weakening of the state machine. It was accompanied by the following processes: a decrease in centralized control, then the collapse of ideological bonds, economic stagnation, and then a drop in the level of economic development, and, finally, the collapse of the USSR and the emergence of a new country - Russia, which at first could only nominally be considered a state. Gradually, the centrally organized corruption of the state was replaced by a “federal” structure of many corrupt systems.
Thus, the current state of corruption in Russia is largely due to long-established trends and a transitional stage, which in other countries in a similar situation was accompanied by an increase in corruption. Among the most important factors determining the growth of corruption and having historical roots, in addition to the dysfunctions of the state machine and some historical and cultural traditions, it should be noted:
· rapid transition to an economic system not supported by the necessary legal framework and legal culture;
· the absence in Soviet times of a normal legal system and corresponding cultural traditions;
· collapse of the party control system.
Corruption is an international problem. It is characteristic of all countries, regardless of the political system and level of political development and differs only in scale.
In 1994, Switzerland, which prided itself on the integrity of its civil servants, was shocked by a huge scandal involving an official from the canton of Zurich, an auditor of restaurants and bars. He was accused of bribes amounting to almost $2 million. Immediately after this, an investigation was launched against 5 bribe-taking auditors from the Swiss government, who patronized individual companies in organizing government supplies. Then two more scandals broke out.
Numerous cases of corruption in Italy, affecting the highest levels of politics, led to more than 700 businessmen and politicians being brought to trial as a result of investigations that began in 1992 in Milan.
In September 1996, a special conference on combating corruption was held in Berlin. According to the materials presented there, in many large cities of Germany, prosecutors are busy investigating thousands of cases of corruption: in Frankfurt am Main - more than 1000, in Munich - about 600, in Hamburg - about 400, in Berlin - about 200. In 1995 it was official Almost three thousand cases of bribery have been registered. In 1994, almost 1,500 people were put on trial, and in 1995, more than 2,000 people, and experts consider these data to be just the tip of the iceberg. Departments for checking foreign refugees, registration points for new cars and many other institutions are involved in corruption. Thus, for cash you can illegally “buy” the right to open a restaurant or casino, driver’s licenses, and licenses to tow illegally parked cars. The construction industry is most affected by corruption.
In one of its newsletters, the international public organization Transparency International (hereinafter referred to as TI), whose goal is to resist corruption at the international and national levels and in business, stated: “It (corruption) has become a leading phenomenon in many leading industrial countries, wealth and sustainable whose political traditions, however, make it possible to hide the scope of the enormous damage caused by corruption to the social and humanitarian spheres.” A study conducted by TI's national affiliates in 1995 found that "public sector corruption takes the same forms and affects the same areas whether it occurs in a developed or developing country."
The problem of the need to fight corruption in Russia became obvious already in the early 1990s. By this time, several projects aimed at combating corruption had been prepared and submitted to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The President of the Russian Federation issued Decree “On the fight against corruption in the public service system” No. 361 dated April 4, 1992. This Decree noted the consequences generated by this negative phenomenon and defined a number of measures aimed at combating corruption. The decree was a step in the right direction, but it decided little and was poorly implemented. The concept of corruption was not given in this Decree.
On June 20, 1993, the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation adopted the Law of the Russian Federation “On the Fight against Corruption.” However, this Law was not signed by the President of the Russian Federation and did not come into force. After the dissolution of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation, the lower house of the new parliament - the State Duma - continued to work on improving the draft Law. The new version of the Federal Law “On the Fight against Corruption” was adopted twice by the State Duma of the Russian Federation and was approved by the Federation Council in December 1995. However, at the end of December of the same year, it was rejected by the President of the Russian Federation.
In November 1997, the State Duma adopted the Federal Law “On the Fight against Corruption” in the third reading. However, due to a number of legal and technical shortcomings, this normative act did not pass the remaining stages of lawmaking. And only on December 25, 2008, Federal Law No. 273-FZ “On Combating Corruption” was adopted.
Most often, corruption refers to the receipt of bribes and illegal monetary gains by government bureaucrats who extort them from citizens for the sake of personal enrichment. However, in a more general sense, participants in corruption relations can be not only government officials, but also, for example, company managers; bribes can be given not in money, but in another form; The initiators of corruption relations are often not government officials, but entrepreneurs. Since the forms of abuse of official position are very diverse, different types of corruption are distinguished according to different criteria (Table 1).
| Table 1. TYPOLOGY OF CORRUPTION RELATIONS | |
| Criteria for the typology of corruption | Types of corruption |
| Who abuses their official position | State (corruption of government officials) Commercial (corruption of company managers) Political (corruption of political figures) |
| Who initiates corruption relations? | Requesting (extorting) bribes on the initiative of a managerial person. Bribery initiated by the petitioner |
| Who is the briber? | Individual bribe (from a citizen)Entrepreneurial bribe (from a legal company) Criminal bribery (from criminal entrepreneurs - for example, drug mafia) |
| Form of benefit received by the bribe-taker from corruption | Cash bribes Exchange of services (patronage, nepotism) |
| Goals of corruption from the point of view of the bribe giver | Accelerating bribe (so that the person receiving the bribe will quickly do what he must do according to his duty) Inhibitory bribe (so that the person receiving the bribe violates his official duties) Bribe “for good attitude” (so that the person receiving the bribe does not make far-fetched faults with the bribe-giver) |
| Degree of centralization of corruption relations | Decentralized corruption (each bribe-giver acts on his own initiative) Centralized “bottom-up” corruption (bribes regularly collected by lower-ranking officials are divided between them and more senior ones) Centralized top-down corruption (bribes regularly collected by senior officials are partially passed on to their subordinates) |
| Level of prevalence of corruption relations | Grassroots corruption (in the lower and middle echelons of power) Top corruption (among senior officials and politicians) International corruption (in the sphere of world economic relations) |
| Degree of regularity of corruption ties | Episodic corruption Systematic (institutional) corruption Kleptocracy (corruption as an integral component of power relations) |
Corruption is the flip side of the activities of any centralized state that claims broad accounting and control.
In primitive and early class societies, payment to a priest, chief or military commander for personally seeking their help was considered a universal norm. The situation began to change as the state apparatus became more complex and professionalized. High-ranking rulers demanded that lower-ranking “employees” be content only with a fixed “salary.” On the contrary, lower-ranking officials preferred to secretly receive from petitioners (or demand from them) additional payment for the performance of their official duties.
In the early stages of the history of ancient societies (ancient Greek city-states, republican Rome), when there were no professional government officials, corruption was almost absent. This phenomenon began to flourish only in the era of the decline of antiquity, when such government officials appeared about whom they said: “He came poor to a rich province, and left rich from a poor province.” At this time, a special term “corrumpire” appeared in Roman law, which was synonymous with the words “spoil”, “bribe” and served to designate any abuse of office.
Where the power of the central government was weak (for example, in Europe in the early Middle Ages), the use of official positions for personal extortion from the population often became the generally accepted norm. Thus, in medieval Russia, “feeding” governors and appropriating fees for resolving conflicts was considered the usual income of service people, along with salaries from the treasury or receiving estates.
The more centralized the state was, the more strictly it limited the independence of citizens, provoking low- and high-level officials to secretly violate the law in favor of subjects who wanted to get rid of strict supervision. Exemplary punishments of corrupt officials usually yielded almost no results, because new bribe extorters appeared in place of those eliminated (demoted or executed). Since the central government usually did not have the strength to completely control the activities of officials, it was usually content with maintaining a certain “tolerant norm” of corruption, suppressing only its too dangerous manifestations.
This moderate tolerance for corruption is most clearly visible in societies Asian production method. In the countries of the pre-colonial East, on the one hand, rulers claimed universal “accounting and control”, but, on the other hand, they constantly complained about the greed of officials who confused their own pockets with the state treasury. It is in Eastern societies that the first studies of corruption appear. Yes, author Arthashastras identified 40 means of theft of state property by greedy officials and sadly stated that “just as one cannot help but perceive honey if it is on the tongue, so the king’s property cannot be misappropriated, even if only a little, by those in charge of this property.”
A radical change in society's attitude towards the personal income of government officials occurred only in Western Europe of the modern era. The ideology of the social contract proclaimed that subjects pay taxes to the state in exchange for the fact that it wisely develops laws and strictly monitors their strict implementation. Personal relationships began to give way to purely official ones, and therefore the receipt of personal income by an official, in addition to his salary, began to be interpreted as a flagrant violation of public morality and the law. In addition, the ideology of economic freedom, justified by representatives of neoclassical economic theory, demanded that the state “let people do their own things and let things take their own course.” If officials' capacity for regulatory intervention decreased, so did their ability to extort bribes. Ultimately, in the centralized states of modern times, official corruption, although it did not disappear, was sharply reduced.
A new stage in the evolution of corruption in developed countries was the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. On the one hand, a new rise in government regulation measures and, accordingly, the power of officials began. On the other hand, big business was born, which in the competitive struggle began to resort to “buying up the state” - no longer to the occasional bribery of individual small government officials, but to the direct subordination of the activities of politicians and senior officials to the protection of the interests of capital. As the importance of political parties grew in developed countries (especially in Western Europe after World War II), party corruption developed, when large firms paid not to politicians personally, but to the party treasury for lobbying their interests. Major politicians have increasingly begun to view their position as a source of personal income. Thus, in Japan and today, politicians who help private corporations obtain lucrative contracts expect to receive a percentage of the deal. At the same time, the independence of internal company employees began to grow, who also have the opportunity to abuse their position.
In the second half of the 20th century, after the emergence of a large number of politically independent “third world” countries, their state apparatus, as a rule, initially turned out to be highly susceptible to systemic corruption. The fact is that the “eastern” traditions of personal relations between the boss and the petitioners are superimposed on huge uncontrolled opportunities associated with state regulation of many spheres of life. For example, Indonesian President Suharto was known as "Mr. 10 Percent" because all foreign corporations operating in that country were asked to pay a clearly defined bribe to the president and members of his family clan. “Bottom-up” corruption was typical, when the boss could blame all the blame on his subordinates, but there was also “top-down” corruption, when corrupt senior officials were not at all embarrassed to openly take bribes and even share them with subordinates (such a system of corruption existed, for example , in South Korea). In the “third world,” kleptocratic regimes appeared (in the Philippines, Paraguay, Haiti, and most African countries), where corruption completely permeated all types of socio-economic relations, and simply nothing was done without a bribe.
The growth of world economic relations also stimulated the development of corruption. When concluding contracts with foreign buyers, large transnational corporations they even began to legally include expenses for “gifts” in the costs of negotiations. In the 1970s, a scandal with the American company Lockheed thundered throughout the world, which, in order to sell its not very good aircraft, gave large bribes to high-ranking politicians and officials of Germany, Japan and other countries. Around this time, corruption began to be recognized as one of the global problems of our time, hindering the development of all countries of the world.
The problem became even more pressing in the 1990s, when post-socialist countries demonstrated the extent of corruption comparable to the situation in developing countries. A paradoxical situation often arose when the same person simultaneously occupied important positions in both the public and commercial sectors of the economy; as a result, many officials abused their positions, not even accepting bribes, but directly protecting their personal commercial interests.
Thus, the general trends in the evolution of corruption relations in the 20th century. – this is a gradual multiplication of their forms, a transition from episodic and grassroots corruption to systematic apex and international corruption.
Causes of corruption.
The theoretical foundations of the economics of corruption were laid in the 1970s in the works of American neo-institutional economists. Their main idea was that corruption appears and grows if there is rent associated with government regulation of various spheres of economic life (the introduction of export-import restrictions, the provision of subsidies and tax benefits to enterprises or industries, the presence of price controls, multiple exchange rate policies etc.). At the same time, those officials who receive low salaries are more focused on corruption. More recently, empirical studies have confirmed that corruption is reduced if a country has few foreign trade restrictions, if industrial policy is based on the principles of equal opportunity for all enterprises and industries, and if government officials are paid higher than private sector workers of the same qualifications.
In modern economic science, it is customary to note the multiplicity of causes of corruption, highlighting economic, institutional and socio-cultural factors.
Economic The causes of corruption are, first of all, low salaries of civil servants, as well as their high powers to influence the activities of firms and citizens. Corruption flourishes wherever officials have broad powers to dispose of any scarce goods. This is especially noticeable in developing and transition countries, but is also evident in developed countries. For example, in the United States, many manifestations of corruption have been observed during the implementation of a program of preferential housing for needy families.
Institutional The reasons for corruption are considered to be a high level of secrecy in the work of government departments, a cumbersome reporting system, a lack of transparency in the lawmaking system, and weak state personnel policies that allow the spread of sinecures and opportunities for promotion regardless of the actual performance of employees.
Socio-cultural The causes of corruption are demoralization of society, lack of awareness and organization of citizens, public passivity in relation to the willfulness of “those in power.”
In those countries where all three groups of factors operate (these are, first of all, developing and post-socialist countries), corruption is the highest. On the contrary, in the countries of Western European civilization these factors are much less pronounced, and therefore corruption there is more moderate.
To explain the causes and essence of corruption relations, economists usually use the model “guarantor (principal) – executor (agent) – ward (client)” (see Fig. 1).
In this model, the central government acts as a principal (P): it sets rules and assigns specific tasks to agents (A), middle- and lower-level officials. Officials act as intermediaries between the central government and clients (K), individual citizens or firms. In exchange for paying taxes, the agent, on behalf of the principal, provides various services to clients (licenses the activities of firms, issues social benefits to citizens, hires workers for the public service, etc.). For example, within the tax service, the principal is the state represented by the head of the tax service, the agents are tax collectors, and all taxpayers are clients. In exchange for paying taxes, taxpayers are given the opportunity to operate legally, otherwise they face fines and other penalties.
The quality of a regulatory system depends on whether conflicts of interest arise in this system between the principal and the agent. The government, in principle, has neither the time nor the ability to personally serve each client, so it delegates the authority to serve them to officials, prescribing certain rules for them. Agent-officials, knowing their clients better than the government-principal, can work more effectively with clients. But it is difficult for the principal to control how numerous intermediary agents perform the prescribed work, especially since officials may deliberately hide information about the true results of their activities. Since the honesty of the official-agent cannot be completely controlled, the agent himself decides whether to be “honest”. The official's decision depends on the expected rewards for good work and the expected penalties for abuse. For example, in the Russian tax system, the payment of a tax official almost does not depend on the amount of funds contributed to the budget due to hidden taxes identified by him. This leads to the fact that the tax collector is often more interested in receiving bribes than in honest service.
Illegal remuneration to an official agent from his clients can be given for various reasons. A citizen or a company can give a bribe so that an official will provide them with the required services more quickly, “out of turn” (accelerating bribe). More often, however, officials are bribed so that they provide their clients with more services offered by the state, and collect less taxes than required by law (inhibitory bribe). It also happens that an official has ample opportunity to find fault on flimsy pretexts; then bribes are given so that the official does not take advantage of his opportunities to show tyranny (a bribe “for a good attitude”).
To prevent corruption, they try to assign very high salaries to the most responsible employees and at the same time tighten penalties for violating their official duty. However, many researchers note that in many cases, government salaries cannot compete with the financial capabilities of potential bribe givers (if they are large legal businessmen or mafia bosses). A decent agent salary is a necessary but not sufficient condition for preventing corruption. Therefore, the state-principal supplements (or even replaces) high incentives with “appeals to honest behavior.” This means that the government is trying to create psychological barriers against the self-interest of agents, for example, raising the moral level of citizens through the mechanism of training and ideological propaganda. In addition, the government-principal encourages direct communications with clients (receiving complaints from the public), which serve as an additional and very important tool for controlling the actions of government agents.
Thus, the “agent-client” relationship depends on the agent’s salary and the breadth of their powers, and the “principal-agent” relationship depends on the degree of control of the principal over the agents and the influence of clients on the principal. Moral norms influence all types of relationships in this system, determining the extent to which deviations from the requirements of the law are permissible.
Some foreign economists express an extremely laconic definition of the main causes of corruption with the following formula:
corruption = monopoly + arbitrariness – responsibility.
This means that the possibility of corruption directly depends on the state’s monopoly on certain types of activities (for example, purchasing weapons) and on the lack of control over the activities of officials, but inversely depends on the likelihood and severity of punishment for abuse.
Measuring corruption.
The scale of corruption is quite difficult to assess. This is due, first of all, to the fact that it (like other types of shadow economic activity) is, in principle, hidden from official statistical accounting. Since government officials have more opportunities to hide their wrongdoings than ordinary citizens, corruption is reflected in crime statistics less clearly than many other types of crimes. In addition, many types of corruption are not even directly related to the payment of monetary rewards, and therefore cannot be assessed.
To obtain comparative data on the degree of development of corruption in different countries, sociological surveys and expert assessments are most often used.
Currently the most respected corruption perception index(Corruption Perceptions Index - CPI), which is calculated by the international organization Transparency International (literally translated - “International Transparency”). This non-profit, non-governmental organization for the study of corruption and the fight against it integrates data from scientific research conducted on different countries by individual economists and organizations for the 3 years preceding the calculation of the composite index. These studies compare the subjective assessments given by businessmen and analysts of the degree of corruption in different countries. In the process of summarizing data from individual studies, each country receives a score on a 10-point scale, where 10 points means the absence of corruption (the highest “transparency” of the economy), and 0 points means the highest degree of corruption (minimal “transparency”).
Corruption perception indices began to be calculated in 1995. The database used by Transparency International is constantly growing: if in 1995 the CPI was calculated for 41 countries of the world, then in 2003 - already for 133. The 2003 Corruption Perceptions Index summarized the results of 17 public opinion studies conducted by 13 independent organizations , and the final list included only those countries that were covered by at least three studies.
Research by Transparency International shows a strong differentiation of countries around the world in terms of the degree of development of corruption (Table 2).
|
COUNTRIES |
Corruption Perception Index | ||
| 1995 | 1999 | 2003 | |
|
Highly developed countries |
|||
| Finland | 9,1 | 9,8 | 9,7 |
| Denmark | 9,3 | 10,0 | 9,5 |
| Sweden | 8,9 | 9,4 | 9,3 |
| Canada | 8,9 | 9,2 | 8,7 |
| United Kingdom | 8,6 | 8,6 | 8,7 |
| Germany | 8,1 | 8,0 | 7,7 |
| Ireland | 8,6 | 7,7 | 7,5 |
| USA | 7,8 | 7,5 | 7,5 |
| Japan | 6,7 | 6,0 | 7,0 |
| France | 7,0 | 6,6 | 6,9 |
| Spain | 4,4 | 6,6 | 6,9 |
| Italy | 3,0 | 4,7 | 5,3 |
|
Developing countries |
|||
| Singapore | 9,3 | 9,1 | 9,4 |
| Hong Kong | 7,1 | 7,7 | 8,0 |
| Chile | 7,9 | 6,9 | 7,4 |
| Botswana | 6,1 | 5,7 | |
| Taiwan | 5,1 | 5,6 | 5,7 |
| South Korea | 5,6 | 3,8 | 4,3 |
| Brazil | 2,7 | 4,1 | 3,9 |
| Mexico | 3,2 | 3,4 | 3,6 |
| Egypt | 3,3 | 3,3 | |
| India | 2,8 | 2,9 | 2,8 |
| Argentina | 5,2 | 3,0 | 2,5 |
| Indonesia | 1,9 | 1,7 | 1,9 |
| Kenya | 2,0 | 1,9 | |
| Nigeria | 1,6 | 1,4 | |
|
Countries with economies in transition |
|||
| Slovenia | 6,0 | 5,9 | |
| Estonia | 5,7 | 5,5 | |
| Hungary | 4,1 | 5,2 | 4,8 |
| Cuba | 4,6 | ||
| Belarus | 3,4 | 4,2 | |
| Czech Republic | 4,6 | 3,9 | |
| Poland | 4,2 | 3,6 | |
| China | 2,2 | 3,4 | 3,4 |
| Armenia | 2,5 | 3,0 | |
| Russia | 2,4 | 2,7 | |
| Uzbekistan | 1,8 | 2,4 | |
| Ukraine | 2,6 | 2,3 | |
| Azerbaijan | 1,7 | 1,8 | |
| Georgia | 2,3 | 1,8 | |
It is quite natural that poverty and corruption go “hand in hand”: the most highly corrupt countries are, first of all, developing countries with low living standards. Post-socialist countries have slightly better scores, but corruption is also quite high here. However, wealth in itself does not guarantee freedom from corruption. Germany and the US have about the same score as much poorer Ireland; France turned out to be worse than Chile, Italy - worse than Botswana.
Differentiation within groups of countries with approximately the same standard of living strongly depends on the national economic culture and government policies. Thus, for countries with Confucian culture (China, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan), where since ancient times an honest and wise official was considered a cult figure, corruption indices are noticeably lower than, for example, in the countries of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh), in which there is no tradition of respect for managerial work.
In general, therefore, two universal patterns can be noted:
corruption is usually higher in poor countries but lower in rich ones;
Corruption is generally lower in countries of Western European civilization and higher in peripheral countries.
A comparison of corruption perception indices over different years shows that many countries are significantly changing the degree of corruption in a relatively short period of time. For example, in countries such as Italy and Spain the situation has noticeably worsened, while in Argentina and Ireland it has improved. However, cross-temporal comparisons of CPI indices must be made very carefully, since changes in a country's scores may be the result not only of changed perceptions of corruption, but also of changed samples and survey methodology.
| Table 3. BRIBE INDICES FOR SOME COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD | |||
| Countries | Bribe Payers Index | ||
| 2002 | 1999 | ||
| 1 | Australia | 8,5 | 8,1 |
| 2 | Sweden | 8,4 | 8,3 |
| 3 | Switzerland | 8,4 | 7,7 |
| 4 | Austria | 8,2 | 7,8 |
| 5 | Canada | 8,1 | 8,1 |
| 6 | Netherlands | 7,8 | 7,4 |
| 7 | Belgium | 7,8 | 6,8 |
| 8 | United Kingdom | 6,9 | 7,2 |
| 9 | Singapore | 6,3 | 5,7 |
| 10 | Germany | 6,3 | 6,2 |
| 11 | Spain | 5,8 | 5,3 |
| 12 | France | 5,5 | 5,2 |
| 13 | USA | 5,3 | 6,2 |
| 14 | Japan | 5,3 | 5,1 |
| 15 | Malaysia | 4,3 | 3,9 |
| 16 | Hong Kong | 4,3 | |
| 17 | Italy | 4,1 | 3,7 |
| 18 | South Korea | 3,9 | 3,4 |
| 19 | Taiwan | 3,8 | 3,5 |
| 20 | China | 3,5 | 3,1 |
| 21 | Russia | 3,2 | The index was not calculated for this country |
If the CPI index shows the propensity of officials of different countries take bribes, then to assess the propensity of entrepreneurs in different countries give bribes Transparency International uses a different index – bribery index(Bribe Payers Index - BPI). Similar to the CPI index, the propensity of companies in exporting countries to pay bribes was assessed on a 10-point scale, where the lower the score, the higher the willingness to bribe. The collected data show (Table 3) that many peripheral countries famous for their corruption (for example, Russia, China) are willing to not only take, but also give bribes abroad. As for firms from developed countries, their propensity to resort to bribery turned out to be quite moderate. It is characteristic that Sweden was among the “cleanest” in both the CPI and BPI index.
In addition to the CPI and BPI indices, other indicators are also used to comparatively assess the development of corruption in different countries - for example, barometer of global corruption(Global Corruption Barometer), economic freedom index(Index of Economic Freedom), opacity index(Opacity Index), etc.
The influence of corruption on social development.
Corruption has a strong and usually negative impact on the economic and social development of any country.
Economic harm anti-corruption is associated, first of all, with the fact that corruption is an obstacle to the implementation of the state’s macroeconomic policy. As a result of corruption at the lower and middle levels of the management system, the central government ceases to receive reliable information about the real state of affairs in the country's economy and cannot achieve its intended goals.
Corruption seriously distorts the very motives behind government decisions. Corrupt politicians and bureaucrats are more likely to direct public resources to areas of activity where strict control is impossible and where the possibility of extorting bribes is higher. They are more likely to finance the production of, for example, combat aircraft and other large investment projects than to publish school textbooks and increase teachers' salaries. There is a well-known anecdotal example when in 1975 in Nigeria, a generously bribed government placed orders abroad for such a gigantic amount of cement that exceeded the capabilities of its production in all countries of Western Europe and the USSR combined. Comparative cross-country studies confirm that corruption greatly distorts the structure of public spending: corrupt governments allocate much less money to education and health care than non-corrupt ones.
The main negative manifestation of the economic impact of corruption is the increase in costs for entrepreneurs (especially for small firms that are more defenseless against extortionists). Thus, the difficulties of business development in post-socialist countries are largely due to the fact that officials often force entrepreneurs to give bribes, which turn into a kind of additional taxation (Table 4). Even if an entrepreneur is honest and does not give bribes, he suffers from corruption, since he is forced to spend a lot of time communicating with deliberately picky government officials.
Finally, corruption and bureaucratic red tape when processing business documents slow down investment (especially foreign ones) and ultimately economic growth. For example, a model developed in the 1990s by the American economist Paolo Mauro allowed him to conjecture that an increase in the calculated “bureaucratic efficiency” (an index close to the Corruption Perceptions Index calculated by Transparency International) by 2.4 points reduces the country’s economic growth rate by about 0 .5%. According to calculations by another American economist, Shan-Chin Wai, an increase in the corruption index by one point (on a ten-point scale) is accompanied by a 0.9% drop in foreign direct investment. However, when reviewing corruption indices, it was already mentioned that there is still no clear negative correlation between the level of corruption and the level of economic development; this connection is noticeable only as a general pattern, from which there are many exceptions.
As for the social negative consequences of corruption, it is generally accepted that it leads to injustice - to unfair competition between firms and to unjustified redistribution of citizens' income. The fact is that it is not the most efficient legal company, or even a criminal organization, that can give a larger bribe. As a result, the incomes of bribe givers and bribe takers increase while the incomes of law-abiding citizens decrease. The most dangerous corruption is in the tax collection system, allowing the rich to evade them and shifting the tax burden onto the shoulders of poorer citizens.
| Table 4. FREQUENCY AND SIZE OF EXTORTION OF BRIBERES IN POST-SOCIALIST COUNTRIES in the late 1990s (according to studies by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank). | ||
| Countries | Percentage of firms that often pay bribes | Average percentage of bribes from the annual income of firms |
| Azerbaijan | 59,3 | 6,6 |
| Armenia | 40,3 | 6,8 |
| Belarus | 14,2 | 3,1 |
| Bulgaria | 23,9 | 3,5 |
| Hungary | 31,3 | 3,5 |
| Georgia | 36,8 | 8,1 |
| Kazakhstan | 23,7 | 4,7 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 26,9 | 5,5 |
| Lithuania | 23,2 | 4,2 |
| Moldova | 33,3 | 6,1 |
| Poland | 32,7 | 2,5 |
| Russia | 29,2 | 4,1 |
| Romania | 50,9 | 4,0 |
| Slovakia | 34,6 | 3,7 |
| Slovenia | 7,7 | 3,4 |
| Uzbekistan | 46,6 | 5,7 |
| Ukraine | 35,3 | 6,5 |
| Czech Republic | 26,3 | 4,5 |
| Croatia | 17,7 | 2,1 |
| Estonia | 12,9 | 2,8 |
Corrupt regimes are never “loved” by citizens and are therefore politically unstable. The ease of overthrowing the Soviet system in 1991 was largely due to the fact that the Soviet nomenklatura had a reputation as a thoroughly corrupt community, enjoying well-deserved contempt from ordinary citizens of the USSR. Since, however, in post-Soviet Russia the Soviet level of corruption was many times surpassed, this led to the low authority of the Boris Yeltsin regime in the eyes of the majority of Russians.
Participants in discussions about corruption, however, put forward the opinion that corruption has not only negative, but also positive consequences. Thus, in the first years after the collapse of the USSR, there was an opinion that if officials were allowed to take bribes, they would work more intensively, and corruption would help entrepreneurs bypass bureaucratic slingshots.
The concept of the beneficence of corruption does not take into account, however, the very high degree of lack of control that politicians and bureaucratic officials acquire in corrupt societies. They have the discretion to create and interpret instructions. In this case, instead of an incentive for more efficient activity, corruption becomes, on the contrary, an incentive for creating an excessive number of instructions. In other words, bribe takers deliberately create more and more new barriers in order to then “help” overcome them for an additional fee.
Corruption “apologists” also argue that bribery can reduce the time required to collect and process bureaucratic documents. But bribes do not necessarily speed up the speed of clerical work. It is known, for example, that in India, high-ranking civil servants take bribes in the following way: they do not promise the bribe-giver faster processing of his documents, but offer to slow down the process of processing documents for competing companies.
The argument that corruption is a stimulus for economic development is especially dangerous because it destroys law and order. Some Russian criminologists argue that in the early 1990s, in post-Soviet Russia, “with the best of intentions,” penalties for official abuses were actually temporarily abolished, and this led to an increase in bureaucratic extortion, which aggravated the economic crisis.
Fight against corruption.
Since state corruption has become one of the brakes on the development of not only individual countries, but also the world economy as a whole, it began to be considered, starting around the 1980s, as one of the main concerns of international politics.
Anti-corruption goals can be chosen in different ways: immediate increase in efficiency in the private sector, long-term dynamic efficiency of the economy, its growth, social justice, political stability. According to the chosen goal, the most appropriate anti-corruption measures are used.
Legislative reforms are often chosen as the simplest tool - not only and not so much the tightening of penalties for corruption, but the simplification and reduction of government control (reducing the frequency of inspections, lowering taxes) to reduce the very possibilities of abusing official position. The arsenal of government measures to combat corruption also includes fairly simple measures to simply tighten control. Post-Soviet Georgia, for example, has introduced a system under which government officials are required to declare their income when they take office, as well as when they leave office.
The international fight against corruption is seriously hampered by differences between the legal systems of different countries in the interpretation of corruption as an economic offense. Thus, in some countries (for example, Taiwan) only bribe takers are punished, and offering a bribe is not a criminal offense. In other countries (for example, in Chile) the situation is diametrically opposite: giving a bribe is a criminal offense, but receiving a bribe is not considered such, unless the official has committed other abuses. In addition to differences in the characteristics of a criminal corruption offense, there are strong differences in penalties for it.
While these measures must be implemented by the central government, they also require support from civil society. When the will of political leaders is based on active public support, it is possible to achieve strong changes in a fairly short period of time (as was the case in the 1990s in Italy during the Clean Hands campaign). On the contrary, if citizens place all their hopes on “wise rulers”, and themselves passively wait for the result, then the noisy campaign against corruption may end in an even greater increase (this is exactly what happened in our country in the early 1990s) or result in repression against political opponents of the ruling regime.
However, the legislative actions of the state cannot in principle bring a decisive turning point in the fight against corruption (if only because the fight against corruption can be “led” by corrupt officials themselves). Decisive success is possible only by increasing the state's dependence on citizens. This requires long-term institutional reforms such as reducing the number and size of government bodies and their staff, creating special or even independent institutions empowered to investigate allegations of corruption (such as the ombudsman institution in Sweden and some other countries), introducing systems of ethical standards for civil servants, etc. Finally, the fight against corruption is impossible without the help of voluntary whistleblowers. In the United States, an informant receives from 15 to 30% of the cost of material damage identified through his denunciation and is protected from persecution by the violators he exposed.
The possibility of implementing these measures depends not so much on the political will of the rulers, but on the culture of the governed society. For example, in Eastern countries with weak traditions of self-government, it is better to rely on the prestige and high pay of public service. This is exactly the path followed by Japan and the “Asian tigers” (especially Singapore and Hong Kong), where the high authority of government officials made it possible to create a highly efficient economic system with a relatively small administrative apparatus and low corruption. In Western countries, with their characteristic distrust of “state wisdom,” on the contrary, they often focus on the development of the actions of non-governmental organizations, civil self-government and control.
Successful fight against corruption, as economists prove, provides immediate benefits that many times exceed the costs associated with it. According to some estimates, spending one monetary unit (dollar, pound sterling, ruble...) on combating corruption brings on average 23 units when fighting corruption at the level of an individual country and about 250 when fighting it at the international level.
It is now generally accepted that neither individual countries nor international organizations can cope with corruption on their own, without helping each other. It is almost impossible to defeat corruption in a single country, since the resistance of the bureaucracy is too strong. Even if there is political will to suppress corruption, lack of practical experience, information and financial resources reduces its effectiveness. International organizations - such as the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank, etc. - actively stimulate the fight against corruption, but they, with their experienced staff, awareness and large finances, cannot successfully combat corruption in any country if its government and citizens do not show the will and determination to fight. That is why this problem can only be resolved in close cooperation between individual countries and international organizations.
In the wake of the scandalous revelations in the Lockheed case, the United States passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in 1977, under which American employees and officials were punished with fines or imprisonment for paying bribes to employees of other countries. Although this law was adopted in the hope that other investor countries would follow the example of the United States, this never happened. Only in February 1999, the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, which was signed by 35 states, came into force, prohibiting the use of bribery in concluding foreign transactions. However, the dissemination of information about it was rather slow: when a survey was conducted in 2002 among managers of Third World countries actively working with foreign entrepreneurs, only 7% of respondents demonstrated good familiarity with the Convention, while 42% had not even heard of its existence .
Corruption in Russia.
Our history, as well as the history of other countries lagging behind in development, is characterized by a high level of corruption in the state apparatus.
Endemic bribery and theft of officials were first recognized as an obstacle to the development of the country back in the time of Peter I. There is a well-known historical anecdote: the emperor decided in the heat of the moment to issue a decree according to which any official who stole an amount equal to the price of a rope should be hanged; however, his associates unanimously declared that in this case the sovereign would be left without subjects. It is characteristic that Chief Fiscal Nesterov, who led the fight against embezzlement and bribery on the personal instructions of the emperor, was himself eventually executed for bribes. The mixing of the state treasury with the private pocket remained typical not only in the 18th, but also in the 19th century. Plot Inspector N.V. Gogol is based precisely on the fact that in Nikolaev Russia, officials of almost all ranks systematically abused their position and were constantly in fear of exposure. Only after the Great Reforms of the 1860s did the level of corruption in Russian officials begin to decrease, although it still remained above the “average European” level.
In the Soviet Union, the attitude towards corruption was rather ambivalent. On the one hand, abuse of official position was considered one of the most serious violations, since it undermined the authority of the Soviet government in the eyes of citizens. On the other hand, government managers very quickly formed in the USSR into a kind of state-class, opposed to “ordinary people” and not subject to their control. Therefore, on the one hand, Soviet legislation provided for much more severe punishments for bribe takers than in other countries - up to and including the death penalty. On the other hand, representatives of the nomenklatura were virtually immune from prosecution and were not too afraid of punishment. In the 1970s, corruption began to acquire a systemic, institutional character. Positions that provide wide scope for abuse have literally begun to be sold in some places. The shock from the abuses revealed at the highest level in the late 1980s (“Rashidov case”, “Churbanov case”) played a big role in the collapse of the Soviet regime.
Although the radical liberals led by B.N. Yeltsin came to power under the slogans of fighting abuses, once in power they themselves noticeably “blocked” the achievements of their predecessors. Surprised foreigners even stated that in Russia in the 1990s, “the majority of civil servants simply do not realize that personal enrichment in the service is a crime.” There were many reasons for such assessments. The fact is that the incomes of government officials remained quite modest, but at the same time it was almost impossible to do business without their favor. Particularly rich opportunities for abuse arose during privatization, when its organizers could literally “appoint as millionaires” the people they liked.
Researchers believe that the most negative feature of post-Soviet corruption is not so much the high intensity of extortion as its decentralized nature. If, for example, in China or Indonesia it is enough for an entrepreneur to “grease up” several high-ranking administrators, then in Russia he has to pay taxes into the pockets of not only them, but also the mass of “minor bosses” (such as sanitary and tax inspectors). As a result, the development of post-Soviet business has become very ugly.
A study conducted in 2000–2001 by the Informatics for Democracy Foundation showed that about 37 billion dollars are spent on bribes in Russia annually (about 34 billion for business bribes, 3 billion for everyday corruption), which is almost equal to income state budget of the country. Although this estimate was considered overestimated by some experts and underestimated by others, it shows the scale of post-Soviet corruption.
In the early 2000s, the Russian government began to demonstrate a desire to limit corruption, however, due to the wide scope of this phenomenon, it will apparently not be possible to reduce the level of corruption to average world standards any time soon.
Yuri Latov
Literature:
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Levin M.Y., Tsirik M.L. Corruption as an object of mathematical modeling. – Economics and mathematical methods, 1998. Vol. 3.
Timofeev L.M. Institutional corruption. M., Russian State University for the Humanities, 2000
Satarov G.S., Parkhomenko S.A. Diversity of countries and diversity of corruption (Analysis of comparative studies). M., 2001
Rose-Ackerman S. Corruption and the state. Causes, consequences, reforms. M., “Logos”, 2003
Center for Anti-Corruption Research and Initiatives "Transparency International-R" (http://www.transparency.org.ru)
Corruption is not a myth, but a reality. But it is a myth that corruption is an exclusively Russian phenomenon.
The historical roots of corruption probably go back to the custom of giving gifts to gain favor. In primitive and early class societies, payment to a priest, chief or military commander for personally seeking their help was considered a universal norm. The offering distinguished the person from other petitioners and helped ensure that his request was fulfilled.
The situation began to change as the state apparatus became more complex and professionalized and the power of the central government increased. Professional officials appeared who, according to the plans of the rulers, should have been content only with a fixed salary. In practice, officials sought to take advantage of their position to secretly increase their income.
One of the oldest mentions of corruption is found in the cuneiform writings of ancient Babylon. As follows from deciphered texts dating back to the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. e., already then before the Sumerian king Urukagin The problem of suppressing the abuses of judges and officials who extorted illegal rewards was very acute. He went down in history as the first fighter against corruption who reformed public administration in order to suppress abuses on the part of the royal administration, judges, and temple staff, reduced and streamlined payments for rituals, and introduced severe penalties for bribery by officials. 13
The rulers of Ancient Egypt faced similar problems. Documents discovered during archaeological research also indicate massive manifestations of corruption in Jerusalem in the period after the Babylonian captivity of the Jews in 597 - 538. before the Nativity of Christ.
The first treatise condemning corruption - "Arthashastra" - was published under a pseudonym Kautilya one of the ministers of Bharata (India) in the 4th century. BC e. The ancient Indian author identified 40 means of theft of state property by greedy officials and sadly stated that “just as one cannot help but perceive honey if it is on the tongue, so the property of a king cannot be misappropriated, even if only a little, by those in charge of this property "
By order of the Persian king Cambyses, the new judge sat in a chair upholstered with leather taken from his predecessor, who was caught taking bribes.
Despite demonstrative and often brutal punishments for corruption, the fight against it did not lead to the desired results. At best, it was possible to prevent the most dangerous crimes,
In the Roman Empire, with its extensive bureaucratic apparatus, corruption flourished. They said about government officials: “He came poor to a rich province, and left rich from a poor province.” At this time, the term “corrumpire”, discussed above, appeared in Roman law. Bribes are mentioned in the ancient Roman “12 Tables” (5th century BC). Known speech Cicero , spoken by him in 70 BC. in the Roman Senate against the governor in Sicily, accused by residents of extortion and appropriation of art objects. The famous speaker had the moral right to make accusations. Cicero himself, who in 51-50. BC e. was also governor of Sicily, famous for his honesty and earned during his reign only legitimate profits from the performance of his duties. However, such behavior was characteristic of few.
In late Republican Rome Gaius Julius Caesar achieved severe punishment for bribery and gifts to officials. It was forbidden, for example, for governors in the provinces to accept golden wreaths from subject cities. Caesar constantly expressed furious disgust for all manifestations of servility. Having discovered the inscription "Demi-god" on the statue erected by the Senate in his honor, Caesar ordered the statue to be removed.
However, bribery of voters was so widespread in ancient Rome that Roman citizens began to consider the amounts they received as legitimate salaries.
As the borders of the empire expanded, officials appointed to responsible posts in the newly conquered provinces were able to pay off at the right time large debts incurred during election campaigns by the most promising politicians, from their point of view, thanks to which they themselves received unlimited opportunities for their personal enrichment. The enormous growth of the bureaucracy in the Late Empire led to positions being viewed as pieces of property that could be exploited
Emperor August tried to counteract this and distributed his personal funds to voters so that they no longer demand anything from candidates for public office, but to no avail. The destructive influence of corruption was one of the reasons for the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Over the next almost thousand years - during the period middle ages, the concept of “corruption” acquires exclusively ecclesiastical, canonical meaning - as seduction, the temptation of the devil. Corruption in the theology of Catholicism has become a manifestation of sinfulness, for according to the Apostle John, “sin is lawlessness.”
The theme of corruption is also found in biblical texts. For example, in one of the books of the Bible, the Book of Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, the father instructs his son: “Do not be a hypocrite before the lips of others and be attentive to your mouth... Let not your hand be stretched out to receive... Do no evil, and it will not befall you evil; move away from untruth and it will evade you... Do not strive to become a judge, lest you be powerless to crush untruth, lest you ever fear the face of a strong man and put a shadow on your righteousness...”
Of all types of corruption, the world's leading religions condemn first of all the bribery of judges: “Do not accept gifts, for gifts make blind those who see and pervert the work of the righteous” (Deut. 16:19); “Do not misappropriate each other’s property and do not bribe judges in order to deliberately appropriate part of the property of other people” (Koran 2:188), etc. The Torah prohibits taking a bribe twice.
Despite the condemnation of the church, in Europe in the early era middle ages the use of official position for personal extortions from the population often became the generally accepted norm. After all, the more centralized the state was, the more functions were concentrated in their hands by secular and church officials, using omnipotence and lack of control for personal enrichment.
The bishops of that time were described by a contemporary as "fishers of money, not of souls, having a thousand tricks to empty the pockets of the poor." The papal legate in Germany complained that the clergy under his jurisdiction indulged in luxury and gluttony, did not observe fasts, hunted, gambled and engaged in commerce. The opportunities for corruption were enormous, and few priests made any serious effort to resist temptation. Many demanded payment even for performing their official duties. Weddings and funerals could not take place until money was paid in advance. Communion was refused until the donation was received. Even a dying person was not given communion until the required amount was extorted from him. The right to grant indulgences, release from punishment due to the remission of sins, provided considerable additional income.
In the south of France, such corruption was especially rampant. There were churches, for example, in which masses had not been celebrated for more than thirty years. Many priests neglected the salvation of the souls of their parishioners and engaged in commercial activities or ran large estates.
In Britain in the Middle Ages, corruption flourished widely in almost all branches of government. In 1601, the Speaker of the House of Commons (England) said about justices of the peace that “these creatures, for half a dozen chickens, are ready to give a damn about a whole dozen criminal laws.” 14
Exemplary punishments of corrupt officials usually yielded almost no results, because new bribe extorters appeared in place of those eliminated (demoted or executed). Since the central government usually did not have the strength to completely control the activities of officials, it was usually content with maintaining a certain “tolerant norm” of corruption, suppressing only its too dangerous manifestations. This moderate tolerance for corruption is most clearly visible in the countries of the pre-colonial East.
So in middle ages corruption in China was legalized and strictly regulated from above. Officials fed from the population, under the supervision of imperial emissaries. Chinese chronicles describe the fight against corruption of the so-called “honest officials” who tried to resist the presumptuous all-powerful bureaucracy under the weak power of the emperor, but to no avail.
In a popular everyday novel describing the author’s contemporary life in China in the 16th century. "Plum flowers in a golden vase or Jin, Ping, Mei» (in 2 vols. - M.: Khud.Lit. - 1986) we are talking about the power of money and the decline of morals. The author writes “Yes, reader. The Emperor lost the reins of power. Hypocritical dignitaries were in power, the court was swarming with slanderers and flatterers. The criminal clique traded posts and carried out massacres. Covetousness flourished. Appointment to a position was determined by the weight of the silver received: depending on the rank, a bribe was also set. The tricksters and craftsmen succeeded, but the capable and honest languished, waiting for years for appointment.”
The modern concept of corruption begins to take shape at the turn New times with the beginning of the formation of centralized states and the current legal systems.
An important impetus for understanding the political aspect of corruption is given by the works Niccolo Machiavelli. He compared corruption to a disease, for example, consumption. It is difficult to recognize at first, but easier to treat. If it is neglected, then it is easy to recognize, but difficult to cure. So is corruption in government affairs. If an incipient illness is detected in a timely manner, which is given only to wise rulers, then it is not difficult to get rid of it, but if it is so neglected that everyone can see it, then no medicine will help.
Subsequently, the emphasis in understanding corruption was shifted to its legal side. Thomas Hobbes a century later he would write in Leviathan: “people who boast of their wealth boldly commit crimes in the hope that they will be able to escape punishment by corrupting public justice or to receive forgiveness in exchange for money or other forms of reward” 15 . He also included among them “those with many powerful relatives or popular people who have gained a high reputation” who dare to break laws in the hope that they will be able to put pressure on the authorities executing the law. According to Hobbes, corruption “is the root from which flows at all times and under all temptations contempt for all laws.” 16
The conclusion made in the middle of the 17th century turned out to be relevant at the beginning of the 21st century.
The presence of corruption in the life and affairs of society is reflected not only in historical documents, but also in many works of art by such masters as Chaucer (“The Canterbury Tales”), Shakespeare (“The Merchant of Venice,” “An Eye for an Eye”), Dante (“ Hell" and "Purgatory"). Thus, seven centuries ago, Dante placed corrupt officials in the darkest and deepest circles of Hell, since he considered bribery to be the reason for the fall of the Italian republics and the success of his political opponents.
Society's attitude towards the personal income of government officials is gradually beginning to change. The ideology of the social contract proclaimed that subjects pay taxes to the state in exchange for the fact that it wisely develops laws and strictly monitors their strict implementation. Personal relationships began to give way to purely official ones, and therefore the receipt by an official of personal income, in addition to his salary, began to be interpreted as a violation of public morality and the law.
In addition, the ideology of economic freedom, justified by representatives of neoclassical economic theory, demanded that the state “let people do their own things and let things take their own course.” If officials' capacity for regulatory intervention decreased, so did their ability to extort bribes.
However, despite the spread of advanced ideas of education, the rule of law, and civil society, corruption does not disappear in real life in modern times.
Its form retains its meaning as favoritism. The life of the Duke is indicative here George Villiers Buckingham famous from the novels of Dumas. With the support of his supporters, he entered the race to become the favorite under King James I.
The fall of the former favorite led to the rise of Villiers' court career. Already in 1616 he became an equerry, received the Order of the Garter, and later the titles of Viscount, Earl of Buckingham, and finally Duke, with huge land holdings. By this time, he had become one of the most influential figures at court: he provided patronage and mediated appointments to positions at court, which greatly enriched him. Buckingham became Lord Admiral - commander-in-chief of the English fleet, and in fact - a key figure in the government, who had enormous influence on the king, and later on his heir. He actively used this to his personal advantage.
Contemporary of Buckingham Nicolas Fouquet Dumas also left the villages. In real life. Fouquet bought himself the position of chief prosecutor at the Parisian parliament and took the post of superintendent of finance. Fouquet's administration was marked by the systematic plunder of the state treasury.
Fouquet issued huge loans to the state on his own behalf and from his hangers-on at exorbitant interest rates, from 20 to 25%. To hide these percentages, in his reports he showed the figure of employed capital higher than the actual figure.
Fouquet issued allocations for payment from one or another item of state revenue, but from funds that had already been spent. The persons who received the allocations sold them for next to nothing to large financiers, who transferred them to real funds and received huge profits, with a significant share of the profits being ceded to Fouquet.
When taxes were farmed out, terrible abuses occurred; tax farmers were obliged to pay an annual pension not only to Fouquet himself, but also to his entourage. Gradually, Fouquet stopped keeping track of his income, spending huge sums on buildings, festivals, mistresses and spies.
Fouquet took measures against possible persecution. He bought the island of Belle-Ile and began to turn it into an impregnable fortress. He bribed the Queen Mother's confessor and thereby attracted her to his side; I tried to bribe the king’s confessor himself.
Fouquet sent the king financial statements, reducing the figures for expenses and increasing the figures for income, and did not suspect that the king, together with Colbert, carefully checked these statements. Fouquet's fate was sealed; but as attorney general, he could only be tried by parliament and therefore his trial could end in acquittal. Colbert persuaded Fouquet to sell the position of prosecutor and donate the proceeds to the king in order to strengthen his favor. Fouquet agreed. He spent the rest of his life in prison.
The Prussian King Frederick II suspected that the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa was bribing his ministers. Under these conditions, he also considered it possible to provide Maria Theresa’s ministers with comparable “material support.”
With the first Chancellor of a united Germany Otto von Bismarck connected by “reptile funds” - “reptilienfonden”, which are literally inscribed in “golden letters” in the history of German corruption.
Prussia then occupied the lands of the Austrian ally - the Kingdom of Hanover - and annexed them to the Reich. And with the Hanoverian king, Prussia entered into an agreement: King George V abdicates the throne, renounces hostile actions against Berlin, and the latter guarantees him a “compensation” of 48 million thalers. But the king broke his promise. It turned out that on French territory he was forming military units hostile to Prussia.
Bismarck considered himself free from the obligation to pay money to the king and formed secret funds from it. For this money, the favor of the Bavarian king Ludwig the Second was bought, and Count von Holstein, who mediated in this matter, received, as historians write, 10 percent due to him.
Funds were not provided for in the budget, and, therefore, Bismarck did not have to report to the Landtag for their expenditure. And to all questions he answered that this money was needed “to monitor and prevent intrigues on the part of King George and his agents.” In January 1868, at a meeting of the Landtag, he even emphasized that “we (the Bismarck government - comp.) deserve your gratitude by pursuing malicious reptiles to their holes to see what they are doing.” So he tried to justify the existence of these funds, which the public immediately caustically called “reptilian”.
But the left-wing press soon found out that the money from them was going not so much to fight the separatists as to bribing the German press so that it would form public opinion favorable to Bismarck. A scandal broke out, and now all the journalists from the bribed publications began to be called “reptiles”, and their newspapers - the “reptilian press”. Very soon the expression became popular throughout Europe, including Russia. At the end of his life, Bismarck himself asked the question: “Is it possible to make politics with clean hands?”
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Many countries have laws against bribery (for example, the Bribery of Public Organizations Act 1889 - UK), corruption, sale of public office, breach of duty by a public official, abuse of power, abuse of fees and charges. Anti-corruption legislation is becoming very ramified.
A new stage in the evolution of corruption in developed countries was the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. On the one hand, a new rise in government regulation measures and, accordingly, the power of officials began. On the other hand, big business was born, which, in the competitive struggle, began to resort to “buying up the state” - no longer to the occasional bribery of individual small government officials, but to the direct subordination of the activities of politicians and senior officials to the protection of the interests of capital.
In the 19th century, the word "Panama". The General Company of the Interoceanic Canal, created in France in 1879 to organize work on digging the Panama Canal, issued shares that were purchased by over 800 thousand people.
By 1888, due to large-scale theft, almost 2 times more funds were spent on the construction of the canal than expected, and only 1/3 of all work was completed. The company suspended work and stopped payments. The collapse of the company caused bankruptcy, ruining tens of thousands of small shareholders. The Panamanian collapse is believed to have cost shareholders 1.5 billion francs, which was almost a third of what France paid after the war of 1870-1871.
During the trial of the case in 1889-93. It turned out that the company, already in a difficult financial situation, was attracting more and more shareholders, bribing influential officials, politicians, and newspaper editors.
The investigation revealed corruption that ran deep into the apparatus of the Third Republic and caused widespread public outrage. However, almost all officials involved in the scandal escaped punishment. Only minor defendants were convicted
And in the USA in 1884 it was established that the treasurer of Rockefeller's Standard Oil, Oliver Payne, bribed the Ohio State Legislature and ensured the election of his father Henry Payne as a senator from this state. One of the scholars of American politics of that time wrote: “Bribery, blackmail, extortion lay at the basis of most legislative acts of the state assembly.”
The danger of corruption has been shownStavissky case in France. In the beginning 30s 20th century adventurer Alexander Stavissky, using connections in political and journalistic circles, in the judicial and administrative apparatus, embezzled significant funds through the sale of counterfeit bonds. Government and political figures who gave permission to issue unsecured bonds were involved in the scam. Using the Stavissky case, fascist groups, under the pretext of fighting corruption, launched an anti-parliamentary, anti-government campaign. They achieved the resignation of the government and on February 6. started a fascist rebellion. Only united actions in defense of democracy saved the country from dictatorship.
As the importance of political parties grew in developed countries (especially in Western Europe after the Second World War), party corruption developed, when large firms paid not to politicians personally, but to the party treasury for lobbying their interests. Major politicians have increasingly begun to view their position as a source of personal income.
Thus, in Japan and today, politicians who help private corporations obtain lucrative contracts expect to receive a percentage of the deal. At the same time, the independence of internal company employees began to grow, who also have the opportunity to abuse their position.
In the 2nd half of the 20th century, after the emergence of a large number of politically independent countries of the “third world”, their state apparatus, as a rule, initially turned out to be highly susceptible to systemic corruption. The fact is that the “eastern” traditions of personal relations between the boss and the petitioners are superimposed on huge uncontrolled opportunities associated with state regulation of many spheres of life.
For example, Indonesian President Suharto was known as "Mr. 10 Percent" because all foreign corporations operating in that country were asked to pay a clearly defined bribe to the president and members of his family clan. “Bottom-up” corruption was typical, when the boss could blame all the blame on his subordinates, but there was also “top-down” corruption, when corrupt senior officials were not at all embarrassed to openly take bribes and even share them with subordinates (such a system of corruption existed, for example , in South Korea).
In the "third world" appeared kleptocratic regimes(in the Philippines, Paraguay, Haiti, and most African countries), where corruption completely permeated all types of socio-economic relations, and nothing was done without a bribe.
The growth of world economic relations also stimulated the development of corruption. When concluding contracts with foreign buyers, large transnational corporations they even began to legally include expenses for “gifts” in the costs of negotiations.
In the 1970s, a scandal with the American company Lockheed thundered throughout the world, which, in order to sell its not very good aircraft, gave large bribes to high-ranking politicians and officials of Germany, Japan and other countries. Around this time, corruption began to be recognized as one of the global problems of our time, hindering the development of all countries of the world.
The problem became even more pressing in the 1990s, when post-socialist countries demonstrated the extent of corruption comparable to the situation in developing countries. A paradoxical situation often arose when the same person simultaneously occupied important positions in both the public and commercial sectors of the economy; as a result, many officials abused their positions, not even accepting bribes, but directly protecting their personal commercial interests.
No country can consider itself immune from corruption. Thus, in 1994, Switzerland, which prided itself on the integrity of its civil servants, was shocked by a huge scandal surrounding an official from the canton of Zurich, an inspector of restaurants and bars. He was accused of bribes amounting to almost $2 million. Immediately after this, an investigation was launched against five bribe-taking auditors from the Swiss government who patronized individual companies in organizing government supplies. Then other scandals broke out.
Numerous cases of corruption in Italy have affected the highest political circles. By the end of the 80s of the last century, the fight against the Italian mafia was led by two judges from the administrative center of Sicily, Palermo, Falcone and Barsellino, who managed to conduct the first serious trials against the mafia and win them. In 1992, both were killed by the mafia. After their deaths, the investigation was headed by judge Antonio di Pietro. It was under his leadership that the operation received its name "Clean hands." Twenty thousand people were put under investigation during the operation. 2,600 people were arrested. Including two former prime ministers - the socialist Benito Craxi and the Christian Democrat Giulio Andreoti, many members of parliament, which, under pressure from public opinion, abolished parliamentary immunity. In the end, six hundred people were put on trial. Connections with the mafia of almost all parties that were part of the coalition that had been ruling for almost fifty years were revealed. The matter ended with the collapse of almost all of these parties.
In one of its newsletters, the international public organization Transparency International (TI), whose goal is to resist corruption at the international and national levels and in business, stated: “It (corruption. - Auto.) has become a common occurrence in many leading industrial states, whose wealth and stable political traditions make it possible, however, to hide the extent of the enormous damage caused by corruption to the social and humanitarian spheres.”
It is absolutely unlawful to divide countries according to corruption based on the East-West axis.
At the present stage, corruption has increasingly begun to become an international problem. Bribery of senior officials abroad by corporations has become widespread. Globalization has led to the fact that corruption in one country has a negative impact on the development of many countries. However, the countries with the highest levels of corruption were no longer limited to the Third World: liberalization in the former socialist countries in the 1990s. accompanied by flagrant abuses of office.
The world community pays considerable attention to the fight against corruption and its prevention.
Even Max Weber, in his work “Politics as a Vocation and as a Profession,” established the criteria for an ideal official:
Has special education and high qualifications;
Possesses professional competence;
Possesses highly developed class honor, guaranteeing impeccability;
Is a mediator between the interests of the state and society;
Refers to regulations and laws in his actions;
Not dependent on your boss;
His salary gives him confidence in the future.
Theoretical developments are now becoming the basis for practical solutions.
In Great Britain, the Committee on Standards (of Conduct) in Public (Public) Life, chaired by Lord Nolan, in 1995 formulated seven principles of public work for officials - a kind of code of conduct:
non-covetousness– serving only public interests, refusing to take any action to achieve material and financial benefits for oneself, one’s family and friends;
integrity– avoidance of any financial or other dependence on external persons or organizations that may affect the performance of official duty;
objectivity b – unbiased solution to all issues;
accountability– responsibility for actions taken to society and provision of complete information in the event of a public inspection;
openness– maximum informing of society about all decisions and actions, their validity (at the same time, reducing information is permissible if it is necessary to comply with the highest public interests);
honesty– mandatory reporting of one’s private interests related to public responsibilities, taking all measures to resolve possible conflicts in favor of public interests;
leadership– adherence to the principles of leadership and personal example in fulfilling the standards of public life.
Under the auspices of the UN, the International Code of Conduct for Public Officials was adopted in 1996.
Since 2004, this report has been dedicated to International Anti-Corruption Day.
On March 8, 2006, the Russian Federation ratified the Convention. The document obliges the signatory states (now 140 countries) to criminalize bribery, theft of budget funds and laundering of corruption proceeds. According to one of the provisions of the Convention, it is necessary to return funds to the country from which they came as a result of corruption. The Convention should become an important instrument of international law to combat corruption, which “harms the development of countries and poses a threat to democracy and the rule of law.”
The history of the emergence of corruption in Russia is rooted in the deep past of Rus', in which it is very difficult to trace the facts of the beginning of the introduction into everyday practice of all kinds of “gifts with hidden intent,” that is, the facts of giving, accepting and mediating promises (bribes). Nevertheless, we know the main thing from the history of Russian corruption: after all, what matters most to us is not when corruption appeared, but when they actually began to fight it.
The history of the beginning of the fight against corruption in Russia
Under Ivan III, in the Code of Laws of 1497, for the first time in the Russian state, a ban on taking promises (bribes) was introduced: “Lend court to the boyars and okolnichy. And at the trial of existence among the boyars and among the okolnichy deacons. And don’t make promises to the boyars, and the okolnichy, and the deacon from the court and from sorrow; Likewise, every judge should not make a promise from the court to anyone. And don’t take revenge with the court, don’t be friends with anyone.”
As the Moscow state developed, central authorities were also formed, among which central government bodies - orders - occupied a special place. The capital's orders were literally overwhelmed with unresolved court cases, their passage moved very slowly, they “dragged,” which is where the famous expression “red tape” came from. The reforms of the “Elected Rada” had a beneficial effect on the development of the political system and the fight against corruption.
Boris Godunov (1598-1605) tried to eliminate bribery through fines, public punishment, and prison.
One of the measures to strengthen control over the order system under Alexei Mikhailovich was the creation of the Secret Order. “In order for the king’s thoughts and deeds to be carried out according to his wishes, and for the boyars and Duma people to know nothing about it.” The Council Code of 1649 condemned bribery and provided for numerous punishments: monetary penalties, ban on office, whipping or whipping, execution or cutting off a hand.
The spread of bribery and embezzlement undermined trust in power and the principles of public administration, and caused serious social upheaval. The 17th century went down in history as a “rebellious” century; unpopular government measures in the tax system were aggravated by the extortion of officials.
Until the 18th century, officials in Rus' lived thanks to the so-called “feedings”, that is, they did not have a salary as such, but they received gifts from people interested in their activities. They were given not only money, but also “in kind”: meat, fish, pies, etc. At that time, only Moscow officials had salaries, but “feeding from business” was not forbidden to them either. And already under Peter I, all “sovereign servants” began to receive a fixed monthly payment, and bribes (offerings) in any form began to be considered a crime. But due to frequent wars, the treasury was depleted and could not always pay salaries. Having lost their main and only means of livelihood at that time, many officials were forced to resume “feeding”. Despite this, no one stepped into the position of impoverished office workers, and bribery was not ceased to be considered a serious crime.
The main fight against bribery began under Catherine II. Even at the beginning of her reign, faced with bureaucratic arbitrariness, she was outraged:
“Our heart shuddered,” Catherine wrote in her decree, “when We heard that some registrar Yakov Renberg, now swearing poor people to Us in allegiance, took money for this from everyone who swore the oath. We ordered this Renberg to be sent to hard labor in Siberia for eternity, and we did this only out of mercy, since he should rightly be deprived of life for such a terrible crime.”
The Empress again appointed the officials a salary, but this time it was paid on time and was much higher than what it was under Peter I.
The average annual salary of an employee in 1763 was 30 rubles in district, 60 rubles in provincial and 100-150 rubles in central and higher institutions, while a pound of grain cost 10-15 kopecks. Now she had the right to demand that officials act honestly and act according to the letter of the law. However, the greed of officials was stronger than the arguments of reason. So, when Catherine II was informed about the results of checks in the courts of the Belgorod province, she was so outraged by them that she issued a special decree to reprimand the corrupt judges:
“It has been repeated many times in printed decrees to the people that bribes and bribery corrupt justice and oppress the needy. This vice, rooted in the people, even upon our accession to the throne, forced us... to announce in a manifesto our obscene admonition to the people, so that those who are still infected with this passion, carrying out justice as the work of God, would refrain from such evil, and in the event of their crime, after our admonition they would no longer expect our pardon. But, to our extreme regret, it was discovered that even now there were those who took bribes to the oppression of many and to the detriment of our interests, and most of all, being themselves in charge and obliged to represent an example of keeping the laws to their subordinates, these same criminals committed they started the same evil.”
During the times of palace coups, when there was no time for officials, their salaries were canceled and “feeding from business” was legalized. At this time, honest employees completely disappeared from the face of the Russian land, since it became simply impossible to separate the offering from the bribe given for solving a problem in circumvention of the law. The supreme power was aware of this, but only helplessly shook the air, unable to change anything. “The insatiable thirst for gain,” Empress Elizaveta Petrovna was indignant, “has reached the point that some places established for justice have become marketplaces, covetousness and partiality have become the leadership of judges, and indulgence and omission have become approval for the lawless.”
In the 19th century, corruption actually became a mechanism of government. It became especially tougher under Nicholas I. Thus, it is known for certain that the landowners of all the provinces of Right Bank Ukraine annually collected a considerable amount for the police. Kiev governor I. I. Fundukley explained this by saying that if landowners do not allocate funds for the maintenance of police officials, “then they will receive these funds from thieves.”
In 1881, Alexander III established a committee to develop a draft Criminal Code. A special decision was made prohibiting the combination of government positions with positions in joint-stock companies and banks. However, officials found a way out and began to “push” their relatives into these organizations.
In 1922, a law was passed according to which bribes were punishable by execution. Subsequently, harsh punitive measures to combat corruption became a permanent practice of the Soviet state, especially under I.V. Stalin, which influenced the reduction of corruption.
Publication source: Memo to employees of the institution “On criminal liability for receiving and giving bribes and measures of administrative liability for illegal remuneration on behalf of a legal entity” developed by the legal department of the Social Protection Committee of the Volgograd Region.
Report on the topic “The history of corruption in Russia”
Everyone knows what a bribe is. Moreover, it has become an integral part of our lives. But we still haven’t decided how to deal with this phenomenon. “We have to do something. Stop waiting. Corruption has become a systemic problem, and we are obliged to counter this systemic problem with a systemic response,” said Russian President D. A. Medvedev. And he was right, because as the history and experience of previous rulers - “bribery takers” show, individual measures or, especially, half-measures will not help the matter. Neither the stick, nor the carrot, nor the finger of public opinion pointing out atrocities, nor even the change of the system itself, which gives rise to this vice, have been able to cope with corruption.
A Brief History: Knut
According to the surviving records of chroniclers, bribes appeared in Ancient Rus', and they immediately began to decisively fight them. Thus, Metropolitan Kirill condemned bribery along with drunkenness and witchcraft, for which he insisted on punishing accordingly, that is, the death penalty (according to the entries in Russian Pravda - “If the wife is a greengrocer, a sorceress, a prisoner - execute her”). The first “anti-corruption legislation” in Russia was adopted during the reign of Ivan III. And his grandson Ivan IV the Terrible issued a decree according to which presumptuous officials were to be immediately executed.
In 18th century legal terminology, bribes were called “promises” (breaking the law for some kind of payment). For them, the perpetrators were subjected to corporal punishment. For example, in 1654, Prince Alexei Kropotkin and clerk Ivan Semenov were whipped for extortion, having taken money and a barrel of wine from merchants for promising not to send them to Moscow, where they were supposed to be resettled by order of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.
You can read the full version of the report on your computer.
Corruption in world history
There is a wonderful book on the Internet by Yu. V. Kuzovkov, “The World History of Corruption,” published in 2010 by Anima-Press publishing house. The book is devoted to the phenomenon of major corruption in the history of states and civilizations, as well as in the modern world. It examines examples of states affected by major corruption, from ancient times to the present day, and analyzes the reasons for their death or, conversely, subsequent prosperity. The work is based on the analysis of about a thousand books and works in the field of general, social, economic and demographic history; The book contains the quintessence (squeeze) of these works on the topic under consideration, presented in a language accessible to the general reader - which, according to the author himself, is the method he uses - the method of historical synthesis. According to the author, the study of the world history of corruption has made it possible to formulate a new historical concept of human development (instead of Marx’s concept, which has lost its relevance), which is presented at the end of the book.
Let me give you an example of the information blocks contained in the book:
Section 1. Corruption in pre-feudal states of Europe and the Mediterranean
Chapter I. Corruption in antiquity
- In the Hellenistic world
- In Carthage
- In the Roman Republic
- Corruption, oligarchy and Roman civil wars
Chapter II. Corruption in the Roman Empire
- Globalization in history and its connection with corruption
- Corruption in the Julio-Claudian era (end of the 1st century BC - end of the 1st century AD)
- Civil war 68-69. AD and its reasons
- Cycles in the social and economic history of Rome
- "Golden Age" of the oligarchy
- Why did corruption and crisis hit the West but not the East of the Roman Empire?
Chapter III. Corruption in the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium)V-7th centuries
- Transformation of the political and economic system of the Roman Empire in late antiquity
- Corruption during the collapse of the Roman Empire (V-VI centuries AD) and its causes
- Emperor-oligarch
- Corruption, civil war and the collapse of Byzantium in the 7th century
Chapter IV. Corruption in Byzantium in the Middle Ages
- Transformation of Byzantine society in the early Middle Ages (VII-IX centuries)
- Increased corruption in the X-XI centuries.
4.3. The collapse of Byzantium in the 11th-12th centuries.
- Crisis of corruption X-XII centuries. in the history of Eurasia
- Last centuries of Byzantium (1204-1453)
4.6. General conclusions and comments to Section 1 (Corruption in pre-feudal states of Europe and the Mediterranean)
Here we examine the history of corruption in a number of ancient states - in the states of antiquity and in Ancient Rome - Byzantium over almost two millennia of the existence of this state. This allows us to draw a number of conclusions that can be considered largely universal and applicable to different historical eras
Source:
- The pdf e-book file can be downloaded and viewed here: http://dusshrh.ru/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Book-2-1-Yuri-Kuzovkov-World-history-of-corruption.pdf
- You can visit the website of the author Yuri Kuzovkov at: http://www.yuri-kuzovkov.ru/second_book/
Abstract on the topic “History of corruption in Russia”
Bribery and extortion
Corruption in Russia has historically varied according to whether it involved receiving undue advantages for performing legal actions (“bribery”) or illegal actions (“extortion”).
Corruption
This word is heard more and more often in the speeches of political figures, and the media are paying more and more attention to it. Ordinary citizens, small entrepreneurs and large businessmen are increasingly faced with this phenomenon in everyday and business life. Due to the scale of corruption, which has become systemic, there are even statements that this is almost a national feature inherent specifically in Russia. In fact, this is not at all the case. As the first deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Security, M.I., noted in his interview for the press. Grishakov:
“The West World has come a long and difficult way in organizing effective work in the fight against corruption. Today it is clear that there are no countries free from it; only its level and scale differ.”
Corruption has been known since ancient times
Mentions of it are found in historical sources that have reached us, relating to all centers of ancient Eastern civilizations, including Ancient Egypt, China, India and others, as well as to the ancient civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome. The term corruption itself, as most researchers believe, comes from the Latin word corruptio, meaning damage, bribery. Mention of corruption and its condemnation are present in all leading religions of the world. You can find confirmation of this in the Bible and the Koran. In the modern world, the term corruption primarily means the use by an official of his official position for personal gain.
If we consider the origins of the emergence of corruption in society, then, apparently, they should be sought in primitive society. They are probably associated with pagan beliefs - our ancestors, completely dependent on the forces of nature, tried to appease the gods who personified these forces. People made sacrifices to them, which were essentially unique gifts. As society developed and the first servants of the cult appeared - shamans, sorcerers, healers, sorcerers, magicians, etc., “close to the gods,” they also began to be given gifts and offerings in order to gain the favor of the gods themselves through them. With the emergence of the state and the advent of professional officials, the custom of bringing gifts to those on whom the fate of a person depended (kings, rulers, priests) began to extend to them, especially since at the beginning of the formation of the state the highest secular and spiritual authorities, as a rule, were united in one face. The development of statehood and the emergence of vast states inevitably led to the emergence of a significant bureaucratic apparatus, a special caste of officials that received increasing powers in society. As the rulers believed, officials were supposed to exist on a fixed salary, but in practice things happened differently. The custom of giving them gifts began to take root in order to gain their favor and fulfill their requests, since expensive gifts distinguished the ruler from the mass of other interested people. In the overwhelming majority of states where a significant bureaucratic apparatus had been formed, its representatives sought to use their positions as a source of secret income. Moreover, such a phenomenon often became widespread in many states and turned into a kind of norm of behavior for officials.
This state of affairs, naturally, could not but worry the rulers, and they took appropriate measures to punish the guilty. Moreover, the punishments were usually cruel and exemplary in nature. The history of mankind has preserved a lot of information about how rulers fought corruption. The first of such information dates back to the second half of the 24th century BC. BC, when the fight against corruption was led by Urukagina, the Sumerian ruler of the city-state of Lagash. But, despite the fight against corruption that has been waged throughout the existence of mankind, it has almost never been possible to defeat it. Usually it was only possible to reduce the level of the most dangerous crimes. There were many reasons for this and they depended on the specific historical features of the development of the state, but one of them was that until the modern era, everywhere in the world, including Western Europe, the norm of behavior was the presentation of expensive gifts, essentially bribes, by the rulers, who also considered the state treasury as their own. Thus, it turned out that the rulers themselves did what they were fighting against, and the entire fight against corruption actually came down to the fight against rival officials who also took bribes and encroached on royal property.
Social contract theory
During the modern period, the theory of social contract became more and more widespread in Europe, receiving its logically completed form in the 17th-18th centuries. According to this theory, the state arose as a product of the conscious activity of people, as a result of some kind of agreement between them. According to this agreement, those who head the state and ordinary citizens have a number of mutual rights and obligations, which also imply mutual responsibility for their implementation. Citizens are obliged to comply with the laws adopted by the state, which, in turn, is obliged to respect and protect the rights of citizens provided for by law. In case of abuse of power, citizens have the right to terminate the contract, up to and including overthrowing those who do so. The theory of the social contract, democratic in its content, was of great importance for the subsequent development of the political system of European states and objectively dealt a blow to corruption.
This concept violated traditional religious ideas about the origin of power, supposedly given to chosen people “from God” and therefore having the moral right to use it at their own discretion. She argued that the people support the government, which must strictly respect and protect the rights of citizens.
Liberal reforms
In European countries, at the request of the population in the 18th-19th centuries. Liberal reforms were implemented, enshrining the position that state power should exist for the benefit of its subjects, and officials should strictly comply with the laws, and, therefore, not take bribes. For example, the US Constitution, adopted in 1787, explicitly stated that accepting a bribe is one of those crimes for which the President of the United States can be impeached.
Thus, society in European countries began to gain the opportunity to effectively influence the quality of work of the bureaucratic apparatus. With the further democratization of the political systems of European states, thanks to the existence of a real multi-party system, a whole network of various public organizations involved in protecting the rights of the population, the level of corruption in developed countries during the 19th-21st centuries has noticeably decreased compared to other countries in various parts of the world. At the same time, it should be noted that developed countries have not been able to completely defeat corruption.
Corruption in Russia
Corruption in Russia, as well as in other countries, has its long-standing roots and specifics. In Russia, corruption has historically varied according to whether it involved receiving undue advantages for performing legal actions (bribery) or illegal actions (extortion).
The formation of Russian statehood took place in very difficult conditions. The invasion of the Mongol-Tatars, and then the establishment of their yoke over the northeastern and northwestern lands led to a breakthrough, a certain discreteness in the natural historical path of development of the Russian lands. A qualitatively new situation arose: democratic veche traditions were becoming a thing of the past; now the Russian princes had to take into account not the opinion of the national assembly (veche), but the opinion of the Golden Horde khans and their governors in the Russian lands - the Baskaks. It depended on their location whether the Russian prince would receive a label (letter) for his reign or not. To get the label you had to go to Sarai, the capital of the Golden Horde; it was impossible to go there without gifts to the khan and his officials. In fact, these gifts were bribes, and this practice became the norm. Everyone understood well that the more expensive and more gifts the prince brought to the Horde, the greater the chance that his request would be resolved positively, especially if it was about receiving a label for the Grand Duchy of Vladimir. A big role in deciding whether to receive a label was also played by how much money (Horde exit) the applicant promised to pay to the Horde. Thus, a situation arose in which it was necessary to pay in order to obtain power, and this had a negative impact on the mentality of the elite of the emerging Russian state. The prince and his entourage, forced to constantly bring gifts to the Horde, began to perceive this as the norm, and, as a rule, people forced to give gifts themselves do not mind receiving them. The system of presenting expensive gifts to those in positions of power turned into a mandatory rule, and was no longer perceived as a type of bribe, but as a kind of sign of respect.
The specificity of the formation of a unified Russian state was also that the political prerequisites for the unification of Russian lands were clearly ahead of the economic ones. It was necessary to unite as quickly as possible in order to overthrow the yoke of the Horde, so violence dominated during the unification. The Moscow principality annexed other Russian lands by force of arms. Moreover, the process of uniting lands into a single state at the turn of the 15th-16th century occurred very quickly. By the beginning of Ivan III’s accession to the throne (1462-1505), the territory of the Moscow State, according to the historian’s calculations, was 430 thousand square meters. kilometers, and by the end of the reign of Vasily III (1505-1533) it grew six times. A powerful state with a vast territory appeared on the map of Europe, which had an increasing influence on international politics, and which had to be taken into account.
The Moscow state and its political system
The political system of the Moscow state was developing towards centralization, but there was not yet a sufficiently formalized state apparatus. The administrative-territorial division was archaic. Local power was transferred to the hands of governors and volosts, who received individual territories (districts, volosts) for management. For performing administrative and judicial functions, they received at their disposal court fees and part of the taxes from the population collected in excess of the established taxes to the treasury, i.e. they seemed to “feed” at the expense of the population of the territories they controlled. This service was called “feeding”. Governors and volostels were appointed from Moscow. Feedings were essentially rewards for past military service, so the “feeders” tried to get as much income as possible from the population for their benefit. In addition, the governing bodies subordinate to them consisted not of government officials, but of their own servants. Arbitrariness on the part of those feeding their servants was quite common.
The state sought to limit the arbitrariness and abuse of feeders, to somewhat weaken their power, since the population suffered from their extortions and complained to the central authorities. The state tried to bring the activities of feeders under its control both “from below” by elected representatives of the local population, and “from above” by central government bodies. However, it was not possible to establish effective control over the activities of feeding workers, since the feeding system itself created fertile ground for corruption. In 1555, the feeding system was officially abolished; in practice, it continued to exist in one form or another until the 18th century.
As the Moscow state developed, central authorities were also formed, among which a special place was occupied by central government bodies - orders, the role of which was constantly increasing. In the second half of the 16th century, a fairly extensive order system developed in the country. A feature of the order system was that almost every order performed not only administrative functions, but also judicial ones. The reforms of the “Elected Rada” - the name of the government circle that formed in the late 40s of the 16th century around the young Tsar Ivan the Terrible - had a very favorable effect on the development of the political system and the fight against corruption. The elected Rada spent the period of its existence, i.e. until the end of the 50s, a number of very important reforms contributed to the political centralization of the country and largely limited the abuse of people in power.
New "Tsar's" code of law
In 1550, a new Code of Law was published, called Ivan IV or “Tsarsky”. It was compiled on the basis of the Code of Laws of Ivan III (1497). It reflected changes in Russian legislation, focusing on problems of management and court. According to the Code of Laws, the role of the central judicial bodies increased, and the importance of the royal court increased. For the first time, in the Code of Laws of 1550, punishments were introduced for boyars and bribe-taking clerks.
The reforms to a certain extent limited the power of the tsar. There is no doubt that the further implementation of reforms would have a beneficial effect on the future Russian statehood, but this did not happen. The elected Rada ceased to exist, its leading members were subjected to repression, and Ivan the Terrible began to pursue a new internal policy, called the oprichnina and aimed at the undivided strengthening of his personal power. The method of implementing the oprichnina was terror. The oprichnina, combined with the protracted Livonian War, which lasted 25 years and ended with the defeat of Russia, undermined all the moral foundations of society, lawlessness and corruption reigned everywhere.
Time of Troubles
The entry of Russia into the Time of Troubles at the beginning of the 17th century further aggravated the situation, and there was even a real threat of loss of national statehood. The consequences of all these events made themselves felt for a very long time. In fact, it was necessary to restore not only the destroyed economy, but also statehood. This restoration followed the path of further centralization. The system of local self-government that was formed as a result of the reforms of the Elected Rada was eliminated, and in fact there was a return to the feeding system. In the 17th century, local power was concentrated in the hands of governors appointed from the center. These were retired military men, their service was not paid by the state. The voivode and his people were supported by the local population. Control over the activities of governors was weak, especially in remote counties, which created fertile ground for abuses.
Corruption also increased in the central authorities, where the bureaucratic apparatus was formed. At first it was still very small in number. Under Ivan III there were no more than 200 people, but in the 17th century there were already 4.5 thousand people. The expanded order system was very confusing; orders often duplicated each other’s activities, so the same matter could be located in different orders. The imperfection of legal proceedings and legislation also made itself felt.
In addition, the state sought to concentrate various court cases in the center and therefore most court cases had to go to Moscow. Local governors decided only the most minor legal cases. The capital's orders were literally overwhelmed with unresolved court cases, their passage moved very slowly, they “dragged,” which is where the famous Moscow “red tape” originated. Order employees, clerks and clerks, considered first of all the cases of those who gave a bribe, and those who did not have such an opportunity were forced to languish in anticipation for an indefinitely long time.
Order of secret affairs
The Moscow tsars made attempts to limit bribery and embezzlement, but they were never able to overcome them. One of the measures to strengthen control over the order system was the creation under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich of the Secret Prikaz (order of secret affairs). It was completely subordinate to the tsar and consisted only of clerks and clerks; the boyars were not included in it. The order was intended to unite the threads of control over government administration in the hands of the tsar. According to a contemporary, the Order of Secret Affairs was created “so that the tsar’s thoughts and deeds would be carried out according to his wishes, and the boyars and Duma people would not know anything about it.” However, soon after the death of Alexei Mikhailovich, the order of secret affairs was closed.
Undermining trust in government
The spread of bribery and embezzlement undermined trust in power and the principles of public administration, causing serious social upheavals; it is not for nothing that the 17th century went down in Russian history as “rebellious.” A striking example of the consequences that corruption can lead to in difficult times for the state is the Salt Riot of 1648 in Moscow. The government's unpopular measures in the tax system were aggravated by the extortion of high-ranking officials. The head of the Zemsky Prikaz, L.S., especially distinguished himself. Pleshcheev, who put people in prison on false charges and released them only for a bribe, as well as the head of the Pushkar order, P. T. Trakhoniotov, who embezzled the salaries of service people. Therefore, during the riot, its participants demanded that the mentioned greedy people be handed over to the people, which was done. The executioner brought Pleshcheev to the square, and the crowd literally tore the bribe-taker to pieces. The next day, Trachoniotov also met a sad fate. He was led around the capital with a block around his neck and then executed. This served as a good lesson for other officials, although the bribery did not stop.
Time of Peter's reforms
The first quarter of the 18th century went down in Russian history as the time of Peter the Great's reforms, which had a huge impact on the development of Russian statehood. Prepared to a large extent by the entire previous socio-economic development of the country, the reforms, however, were not smooth. They led to a rapid leap in the development of Russia, accompanied by the introduction of numerous innovations that did not fit organically and calmly into Russian reality, but burst in abruptly and harshly, often forcibly imposed from above.” This was due to a number of reasons: firstly, the reforms took place in conditions of war, since Russia spent most of the reign of Peter I in a state of war, and secondly, the tsar did not have a clear plan for their implementation, and they proceeded rather chaotically, spontaneously, under the pressure of specific circumstances. Naturally, this led to huge losses and costs.
The reforms carried out by Peter I completed the process of establishing an absolute monarchy in Russia. The essence of absolutism was expressed in the “Military Regulations” (1715): “His Majesty is an autocratic monarch who should not give an answer to anyone in the world about his affairs; but he has the power and authority to rule his own states and lands, like a Christian sovereign, according to his own will and good will.” The absolute monarch had full legislative, executive and judicial power; he was also the commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces. The Moscow state turned into the Russian Empire. In October 1721, after the victory in the Northern War, Peter I accepted the title of “Father of the Fatherland, Emperor of All Russia.”
Absolutist regimes by this time already existed in most countries of Western Europe. But in the West, absolutism, which was by its nature a feudal regime, arose in the conditions of the existence of capitalist relations, and there was a kind of “balance” of the forces of the bourgeoisie and the nobility. This did not happen in Russia. Therefore, we can say that a special type of absolutism has developed in Russia, different from the Western one. The difference was, first of all, that there was actual independence of the regime in relation to civil society, which placed it above society.
The reforms of the state apparatus and administration carried out by Peter I had enormous consequences for the development of Russian statehood. In fact, it was under Peter I that the foundations of a totalitarian state were laid in our country. Peter I managed to create the so-called “regular state” - police-bureaucratic in essence, in which the life of every person was strictly regulated. This type is characterized by a system of comprehensive control, passport regime, and denunciation.
Under Peter I, a huge bureaucratic apparatus was created, which gradually grew, and its role in governing the state increasingly increased. The interests of the bureaucratic apparatus came into conflict with the interests of social development, since the criterion for the successful work of officials was, first of all, orderly office work, and not the real state of affairs. In addition, the maintenance of an ever-increasing bureaucratic apparatus required ever greater expenses, which often clearly exceeded the material resources of the state, which began to be clearly manifested already under Peter I, and, above all, in the work of local authorities. Naturally, officials compensated for the lack of funding by extorting money from the population.
Thus, we can conclude that the reforms of Peter I not only did not eliminate the conditions for corruption in Russia, but even created more favorable soil for it.
It should be noted that the tsar himself understood the real state of affairs quite well, had no illusions about assessing the moral qualities of the people filling numerous offices, and was suspicious of officials. As N.I. Pavlenko, one of the researchers of this period in Russian history, notes, the tsar “was ready to see in almost every one of them an embezzler, a bribe-taker, an extortionist, a person who knew no bounds in quenching the thirst for profit by robbing the state and individual subjects of the sovereign "
Based on such assessments of officials, Peter I paid great attention to the creation of regulatory bodies, which were created simultaneously with the management apparatus. It is significant that in 1711, on the same day, the Senate and the Institute of Fiscals were established.
Fiscals were supposed to “secretly inspect, inform and denounce, without interfering in the course of the case itself.” They were subordinate only to the chief fiscal, whose position was established under the Senate. It was to him that they reported all the violations identified.
New executive authorities
Collegiums
In 1718-1721 new executive bodies of the central government were created - they became collegiums, replacing the confusing order system (by that time there were 44 orders). Cases in the boards were considered and decided collectively. One of the boards, the justice board, was in charge of court cases. Peter even made an attempt to separate the judicial power from the administrative power, but he failed to do this.
Preobrazhensky order
The punitive body called the Preobrazhensky Prikaz was of great importance in Peter's state - it arose at the end of the 17th century and conducted investigations, as well as courts in political cases. In 1718, another punitive body was created - the Secret Chancellery. She also carried out investigations and trials in political cases, but her competence mainly included cases relating to St. Petersburg and the district. The “Cabinet” also played an important role - this was the name of the personal office of Peter I.
Creation of the prosecutor's office
In 1722, the most important control body was created in Russia - the prosecutor's office. The highest position in the country, the prosecutor general, was established under the Senate, and prosecutors in the collegiums. Unlike fiscal officials, prosecutors, having discovered a violation of the law, had to correct it. The Prosecutor General was endowed with very large functions and could only be appointed or removed by the tsar. He led the meetings of the Senate and exercised control over its activities. In the decree issued by Peter I, the following was said about the position of the Prosecutor General: “This rank is like our eye and attorney for state affairs.” P. N. Yaguzhinsky was appointed the first prosecutor general.
Abuses by high-ranking officials
But, despite the presence of a developed control system, corruption in Russia under Peter I continued to exist. Moreover, very high-ranking officials were noticed in the abuses, including those who, due to their duties, had to fight extortion themselves, and even people from the tsar’s inner circle. Thus, the Siberian governor, Prince M.P., was convicted of embezzlement. Gagarin. He was accused of not only stealing government money, but also receiving bribes, extorting gifts from merchants and appropriating other people's goods. He even went so far as to appropriate for himself three diamond rings and a diamond in a nest intended for the wife of Peter I, Catherine.
The abuses were so obvious that the thieving governor did not even deny them, and in his petition addressed to the tsar he asked only for his life to be saved in order to go to a monastery. However, he did not receive such mercy from Peter and, as a warning to other embezzlers, he was publicly hanged in July 1721 in front of the building of the College of Justice. The credit for exposing Prince Gagarin belonged to Chief Fiscal Nesterov. And a few years later, in January 1724, the chief fiscal officer Nesterov himself was publicly wheeled, who, as it turned out, was also involved in very serious abuses. Petersburg Vice-Governor Ya.N. Korsakov had his tongue publicly burned after torture for embezzlement and then sent into exile. The same fate befell Senator Prince Grigory Volkonsky.
High-ranking nobles who enjoyed the tsar’s trust were convicted of contract fraud - Admiral F.M. Apraksin, Chancellor G.I. Golovkin, A.V. Kikin, U. Sinyavin. The tsar’s favorite, Alexander Menshikov, was also repeatedly brought to investigation on charges of embezzlement, and only Peter I’s leniency towards his favorite allowed the prince to avoid severe punishment. However, as many historians believe, Menshikov could well have shared the fate of other embezzlers if the emperor had lived a few more years.
The era of palace coups
After the death of Peter I, an era of palace coups began in Russia, characterized by instability and uncertainty of political power and favoritism. For most of this era, women were on the throne, some of them could be called empresses only on formal grounds. Naturally, this created favorable conditions for abuses, especially since officials were often delayed, and sometimes not paid at all, since the treasury was sorely lacking money to maintain the bureaucratic apparatus.
Catherine the Second
The situation improved somewhat during the reign of Catherine II; right steps were even taken in Russia to create a rule of law state. Measures were taken to streamline legal proceedings, but corruption continued to exist. The same can be said regarding the periods of the reign of Paul I and Alexander I.
Nicholas the first
Nicholas I, who ascended the throne after the suppression of the uprising on December 14, 1825 in St. Petersburg, demanded the creation of a Code of Testimony of the Decembrists on the internal state of Russia. This document clearly showed the full extent of lawlessness in management, court, finance, etc. The reasons lay in the uncontrolled manner of public administration and the accompanying corruption in almost all echelons of power.
Nicholas I understood that the situation in the country could only be changed through reforms, that it was necessary to make concessions to the “spirit of the times,” but he was afraid of reforms and their consequences. Nicholas I saw a way out of this situation in strengthening personal power, bureaucratization and militarization of the country, fighting dissent and strengthening punitive authorities. The bureaucracy began to grow at an unprecedented pace. By the end of the reign of Nicholas I, it had increased approximately six times compared to the beginning of the century, and the population of Russia had only doubled during this time.
It was almost impossible to verify the veracity of thousands of reports received by various government bodies; moreover, most institutions, including ministries, were headed by army generals who were new to the business that was new to them. In such a situation, managers became somewhat dependent on their subordinates. The middle bureaucracy began to play an increasingly important role in government. This was recognized by Nicholas I, who once said that “Russia is ruled by mayors.” The officials themselves understood this, which contributed to the spread of corruption.
Lack of a unified set of laws
What also helped officials in Russia commit abuses with impunity was the fact that the country had not drawn up a new unified set of laws since the Council Code of 1649. There were many manifestos, decrees, and provisions that often contradicted each other, which experienced bureaucrats very cleverly used for their own selfish purposes. Nicholas I ordered the compilation of a Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, which, in his opinion, was supposed to help restore order in the country without changing its political system. A set of laws was drawn up and approved in 1833, but given the presence of general corruption, this did not change the situation in the country. It was under Nicholas I that the bureaucracy in Russia turned into a kind of class, invulnerable and aware of its strength. This class, with some modifications, happily exists to this day, posing a real threat to the development of the country, still engaging in bribery and extortion.
The defeat of Russia in the Crimean War showed the inconsistency of the policies of Nicholas I, the need to implement reforms, which was done in the 60-70s of the 19th century by Alexander II. One of the first reforms was the judicial reform (1864). The court became classless, transparent, independent and acquisitive. Jury trials were also introduced. It seemed that the reforms of Alexander II could radically change the history of the country and also put an end to corruption, but this did not happen, since the reforms carried out were not supported by reforms in the political sphere. Autocratic power was preserved; moreover, after the assassination of Alexander II by the Narodnaya Volya, his son Alexander III ascended the throne and began to pursue counter-reform policies and strengthen the monarchical system.
The bureaucratic apparatus very soon adapted to the new conditions and realized that post-reform Russia had opened up wide new opportunities for all kinds of abuses, giving them a certain civilized appearance. Entrepreneurial activity in Russia was entirely dependent on permission from officials who extorted hefty bribes. Huge funds, including government funds, were not directed towards investment in industry, but ended up in the pockets of officials. Corruption has clearly become an obstacle to the development of market relations. To limit bribery and extortion, under Alexander III, a special decision was made prohibiting the combination of government positions with positions in joint-stock companies and banks. However, officials found a way out and began to “push” their relatives into these organizations.
Nicholas II
The reign of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II is also characterized by the flourishing of corruption, in which not only officials of all ranks were involved, but also people close to the Emperor and even members of the Imperial family. Suffice it to recall the actions of the “holy elder” Grigory Rasputin, who openly took bribes for solving all sorts of cases, including appointments to high government positions. It was corruption, along with other contradictions of society, that became the reason for the maturation of revolutionary sentiments in the country and ultimately contributed to the Bolsheviks coming to power.
Politics of War Communism
The policy of “war communism” pursued by the Bolsheviks during the civil war led to the emergence of a new bureaucracy that took on distribution functions. After the end of the civil war and the transition to peace, a new administrative apparatus was handed over, but the Bolsheviks were unable to refuse to involve old officials in this work due to the lack of their trained personnel. Therefore, a kind of merging of the new bureaucracy with the old pre-revolutionary one gradually began to occur, as a result of which the Soviet bureaucracy arose, which largely inherited all the vices of previous times, and, above all, corruption.
NEP
Already during the NEP period, this problem showed itself clearly: numerous cases of bribery, theft of public funds, and raw materials from state-owned enterprises were revealed. All this forced the young Soviet state to take brutal punitive measures. In 1922, a law was passed according to which bribes were punishable by execution.
Stalin I.V.
Subsequently, harsh punitive measures to combat corruption became a permanent practice of the Soviet state, especially under I.V. Stalin, which undoubtedly influenced the reduction of corruption. However, it is impossible to conclude that there was no corruption in the USSR during the Stalinist period. It existed, but not in the same shapes and sizes as in Tsarist Russia. The fact is that at that time the relationship between “power and wealth” was especially clearly visible, and wealth was not in the classical sense of this concept. The official did not need money to purchase a car, a mansion, an apartment, etc. All this gave him a position of power. If an official purchased a car with money received for a bribe, he would probably end up in prison, or even be shot. In addition, it was then impossible to simply buy a car in the USSR, and using a government-owned car with a personal driver assigned to an official by state was not prohibited by law at one’s discretion. Therefore, in the highest echelons of power there was a fierce struggle for a place in power structures, and not for receiving bribes.
The bureaucratic apparatus under I.V. Stalin grew significantly and strengthened; the so-called nomenklatura appeared, which in its essence and position in society was very similar to the class of bureaucrats formed under Nicholas I.
Brezhnev L. I.
This similarity began to manifest itself especially clearly during the period of L. I. Brezhnev, especially in the last years of his life. Even in the general principles of the state policy pursued, the period of “developed socialism” was very reminiscent of the times of Nicholas I during the period of “the apogee of autocracy.” One term is very suitable to characterize these two periods - stagnation. Corruption began to penetrate all echelons of power, discrediting it and coming into blatant contradiction with the needs of society. There is no doubt that corruption significantly aggravated the crisis of the socialist era and hastened the collapse of the USSR.
It was during the last period of the reign of L.I. Brezhnev, bribery began to penetrate more and more widely into such areas of society as healthcare and education, which was practically not observed in the USSR before.
The collapse of the USSR and the formation of independent states from the former republics were accompanied by political, economic and social crises, and conflicts on ethnic grounds. The formation of the new Russian statehood took place under extreme conditions of hyperinflation, unemployment, and hasty voucher privatization, which was more like simply the looting of state property.
Treacherous privatization
The criminalization of society took place against the backdrop of the inaction of law enforcement agencies and a fierce struggle for power. It was at this time that trends were formed that largely explain the enormous scale of corruption today.
Firstly, the privatization of property occurs, as a result of which either the representatives of the nomenklatura themselves, or those who had connections with them and thus gained access to privatization, become its owners.
Secondly, representatives of the criminal world were included in the privatization process to one degree or another, who also turned out to be associated with representatives of the nomenklatura. Many of them then managed to legalize their business and criminal morals.
Thirdly, there was a return to the times of “feeding”.
In conditions of non-payment of salaries, people of different professions, including doctors and teachers, law enforcement officers, etc., began to use their work to obtain additional income, some to survive, others to enrich themselves.
Fourthly, there was a further increase in the bureaucratic apparatus, the backbone of which was the previous nomenklatura. Thus, it turned out that a significant part of the representatives of big business became such through abuse and outright crime. The bureaucratic apparatus now has enormous power in the country and uses it for its own selfish purposes. Corruption has become widespread in society, and all sectors of society are involved in it to one degree or another. Corruption has become a norm of life, especially in business, politics, and the bureaucracy.
However, this cannot continue for long, since the level of corruption has already exceeded all acceptable standards. It literally paralyzes society, becoming a serious obstacle to the development of democracy, economics, statehood, and gives rise to immorality and crime. According to a report by the international organization Transparency International, Russia currently ranks 143rd out of 180 countries in the corruption rating, competing in this area not with developed Western countries, but with African ones.
The country's leadership understands the situation well and is developing a set of measures to combat corruption. Russian President D. Medvedev declared the fight against corruption a priority direction of state policy. In his opinion, “corruption is enemy number one.” Russia has already developed a presidential package of anti-corruption laws and there is reason to believe that after its approval, an effective fight against corruption will begin in the country.
Modern assessments of corruption
| 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
| 2,58 | 2,27 | 2,4 | 2,4 | 2,1 | 2,3 | 2,7 | 2,7 | 2,8 | 2,4 | 2,5 | 2,3 | 2,1 | 2,2 |
Literature:
- The whole world to fight global corruption!
- K2 Capital.
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