CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

132 Syndromes of Corruption
coercion was woefully unsuited to respond to the signals sent by markets
and politics, or to sustain open and orderly competition in either arena.
Second, even though the state was weak as a whole, groups of officials and
managers within it were powerful. Indeed, they were already operating
with a degree of impunity as the system began its long collapse under
perestroika. McFaul (1995: 211–221) argues that officials were acquiring
limited de facto property rights – of consumption and of profit, if not rights
of transfer – in the enterprises they ran. In the chaos that followed 1991,
those officials had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to turn
major state assets into personal property.
Third, having property rights is one thing; defending them in an
insecure setting is quite another (Mendras, 1997: 125). Organized
crime’s private law enforcement and debt-collection functions quickly
became essential (Varese, 1997, 2001) while court, police, and bureaucratic
functions broke down, and here too the Soviet era had set the stage.
The forerunners of present-day mafiyas began to form in the 1920s, and
by the late 1930s were de facto partners with the party-state in disciplining
inmates of the immense network of prisons (Frisby, 1998). During the
stagnation of the Brezhnev era, and to a greater extent during perestroika,
criminal gangs exploited niches within the shadow economy, particularly
in remote areas such as Georgia and the Far East. After 1991 organized
crime groups were well-positioned both to extend their influence and to
rent out their ‘‘muscle’’ to entrepreneurs. All markets require a level of
trust; organized crime and corrupt officials turned trust into a commodity
because of the weakness of public institutions and private norms (Varese,
1997: 594–595, 2001).
Fourth, while corruption in the Soviet era was extensive it had a kind of
normative framework. Enterprise managers could exploit their economic
fiefdoms within limits (McFaul, 1995). More pervasive were practices of
blat – a term often used to refer to illicit influence but having richer
connotations of reciprocity and what we might call networking
(Ledeneva, 1998). Blat was an aspect of corruption, but it was also a
process of mutual aid reaffirming personal relationships. When the Soviet
system fell key underpinnings of blat went with it: a ‘‘shortage economy’’
and the daily opportunities for personal exchanges it created gave way to
markets, state property became private property (often overnight, in
obscure ways), and informal solidarity gave way to pervasive insecurity
(Ledeneva, 1998: 176). Increasingly relationships were structured by
money exchanges, becoming impersonal and limited in terms of mutual
obligations (Frisby, 1998: 28–29; Ledeneva, 1998: 178 ). More or less
anything could be bought or sold, but interpersonal relationships, trust,
and an older normative framework faded.