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CORRUPTION IN RUSSIA
CORRUPTION is one of the key problems facing the Russian state as it seeks to evolve out of its socialist past. High levels of corruption pose a serious threat to the establishment of democracy and the creation of a robust, market-based economy. As a number of recent statistical analyses have shown, corruption retards economic growth and increases income inequality and poverty.1 The political consequences of widespread corruption, while less tangible, are no less real. Corruption undermines the legitimacy of elected officials and democratic values, erodes the rule of law, impairs the performance of public institutions, and can fuel crime and unrest.
Cross-national indexes highlight the severity of the problem in Russia. In the Corruption Perceptions Index prepared by Transparency International (TI), Russia scored 2.8 in 2004 and 2.7 in 2003 on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being least corrupt.2 The World Bank also ranks Russia in the bottom third of countries with a score of -0.90 in 2002 on its scale of -2.5 to 2.5.3 And Freedom House's Nations in Transit likewise scores Russia poorly for corruption, giving it a rating of 5.75 in 2003 on its scale of 1 to 7, in which 7 is the worst.4
Affirming these rankings, leaders inside and outside the country have identified corruption control as a pressing need, although the sincerity of their commitment to reform may be questionable.5 While Russia has signed the UN Convention against Corruption (2003) and the Council of Europe's Criminal Law Convention on Corruption (1999), it has not ratified these documents or brought its national legislation into compliance with them.6 Current anticorruption programs target low-level officials, while leaving higher-level figures untouched. Charges of corruption in Russia tend to be a political weapon wielded by one side against another to gain advantage in elections. The insiders who benefit from corrupt practices have little interest in ending them.
While cross-national surveys point to a serious corruption problem, they provide little more than a superficial picture of a country as large and diverse as the Russian Federation. To make up for this shortcoming, in 2002 TI and the Information for Democracy Foundation (INDEM) conducted a survey of forty regions that provides the first effort to measure differences in the perceptions...