William A. Clark - Crime and Punishment in Soviet Officialdom: Combating Corruption in the Political Elite, 1965-1990

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN SOVIET OFFICIALDOM

Contemporary Soviet/Post-Soviet Politics

PERESTROIKA-ERA POLITICS
THE NEW SOVIET LEGISLATURE AND GORBACHEV'S POLITICAL REFORMS
Robert T. Huber and Donald R . Kelley . editors

CRACKS IN THE MONOLITH
PARTY POWER IN THE BREZHNEV ERA
James R. Millar, editor

SOVIET CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS
FROM DE-STALINIZATION TO DISINTEGRATION
Robert Sharlet

EXECUTIVE POWER AND SOVIET POLITICS
THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE SOVIET STATE
Eugene Huskey, editor

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN SOVIET OFFICIALDOM
COMBATING CORRUPTION IN THE POLITICAL ELITE, 1965-1990
William A . Clark

BEYOND SOVIETOLOGY
ESSAYS IN POLITICS AND HISTORY
Susan G . Solomon , editor

Combating Corruption in the Political Elite, 1965-1990

William A. Clark

First published 1993 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clark, William A., 1958
Crime and punishment in Soviet officialdom: combating corruption in
the political elite, 19651990/William A. Clark
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56324-055-6 (cloth)
ISBN 1-56324-056-4 (pbk.)
1. Political corruptionSoviet UnionHistory.
2. BureaucracySoviet UnionHistory.
3. Misconduct in officeSoviet UnionHistory.
I. Title.
JN6529.C6C58 1993
354.47009'94dc20
92-45245
CIP

ISBN 13: 9781563240560 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9781563240553 (hbk)

The demise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the final day of 1991 did not erase the multitude of social, economic, and political problems that had developed over the course of the previous seventy-five years. Just as the Bolsheviks were forced to address a number of pressing concerns that they inherited from both the tsarist and provisional governments, so too the individuals who make up the post-Soviet leadership in the former territories of the USSR have been saddled with the legacies of communist rule. The possible solutions to these already well-chronicled problems are as numerous as the different languages and cultures of the resultant independent states of the region. While their specific responses will in all likelihood be quite different, conditioned as they are by a great number of different historical and cultural forces, many of the most pressing problems in the post-Soviet states may be quite similar in their origins.

In this book, I seek to shed some analytical light on one rather pervasive social and political problem that was seemingly unsolvable by Soviet authorities: official corruption. The pages that follow contain an honest attempt to present the nature of the problem in its most objective form. Unlike a number of works appearing over the years on the topic of Soviet political corruption or elite privilege that have sought primarily to affix moral blame to this or that individual or to this or that mode of social organization, I have sought to relegate any such ethical calculation to the realm of the reader's own judgment. That is to say, despite the fact that there is no doubt quite an abundance of blame to be distributed on this score, such an exercise is not the goal of this book. The achievement of such a goal at this time would add very little to that which is already understood, for previous works have in all probability succeeded in evaluating ethically the phenomenon of political corruption in Soviet Russia and have raised the appropriate measure of penance for all offenders.

Rather, my hope is that the present treatment of political corruption raises more provocative questions. I have adopted a theoretical and comparative perspective on the social phenomenon of corruption in the Soviet Union during that state's last quarter-century of existence, with the explicit assumption that the study of the Soviet Union and its resultant independent states can be furthered by discounting the once predominant notion that the USSR and its politics are sui generis , and hence uncomparable. Substantively and methodologically, it is arguable that such a predisposition did as much damage as it did good in analysis of the post-Stalin period.

To approach the "fulfillment of this plan," as it were, attention has been paid to the theoretical academic literature in organizational behavior, economics, administrative ethics, and political development, as well as to the more traditional areas involving Russian and Soviet history, culture, and politics. As a scholarly exercise, the conscious attempt to view developments in the Soviet Union from a more broad-based and comparative perspective, informed as such by an array of diverse forces, risks challenging one's comfortable assumptions about both the generic theoretical literature and the specific realities of Soviet politics. I hope that such a juxtaposition facilitates some refinement of each body of literature.

A number of individuals have contributed in various ways to the successful completion of this manuscript. My administrative superiors, both at the University of South Carolina and, subsequently, at the Louisiana State University, have made the research and writing of the book much easier. In this respect, Michael Welsh, director of the James F. Byrnes International Center at the University of South Carolina, and Cecil L. Eubanks, chairman of the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University, each provided the needed organizational support to allow the project to progress apace. Similarly, Michael Weber, executive editor for the social sciences at M.E. Sharpe, Inc., displayed from the start a great deal of faith in the project and provided continued encouragement and patience when the tumultuous political events in the Soviet Union necessarily caused delays and changes in the writing of the manuscript. Special thanks should also be extended to Peter Reddaway, who read the entire manuscript in draft form and offered both bibliographic direction and substantive guidance, both of which effected improvement in the final product. Finally, a debt is owed to Gordon B. Smith, who some years ago sensitized me to the importance of law and issues of legality in Soviet politics. While it is clear that each of these individuals improved the content of the manuscript in his own particular way, all are of course free of responsibility for any errors of fact or interpretation, which remain the sole possession of the author.