Corruption in Russia

How I haven’t got round to writing about Russian corruption yet is a mystery even to me, I expect my recent Call of Duty: World at War addiction has something to do with it but I digress...

Right of the bat I will tell you that there is corruption in Russian society at every single level of society and you don’t exactly have to go looking for it with a magnifying glass.

The nature of the beast

Why is Russia so corrupt? While no one man can answer this question, I do have some ideas on it. Firstly, the shockingly low pay of even those in Moscow, the money capital, plays a role. Sure there are those with more normal sallies who work in Western companies and alike, but in this case I’m talking about the average Joe, or average Sergey, who works in a Russian company. For a large majority, working here is like taking a daily bites out of one huge shit sandwich every day. Take, for example, doctors who study for 10 years that are then offered pay in the range of 10-15000 roubles per month. I mean an American teenager working in McDonalds will make more money than the average Russian doctor working in a Russian hospital. You may think I am exaggerating here, in which case I suggest you have a sit down with a Russian doctor and he’ll be glad to fill you in.

Same goes with the police, tax collectors and numerous other professions.

On a side note, when the crisis hit, one lady I used to teach was told that she would be working Saturdays, without pay, and if she didn’t like it, she could quit. Nice attitude to employees, huh, but like I said, daily shit sandwich.

Another example of corruption central is Russian police. Now don’t get me wrong, I hate Russian police more than you can image, as do most Russians, but I understand why they are so corrupt. The base salaries most of them make are simply not enough to live on, so you bet your ass they’ll be hassling you for a bribe, hell, they straight up ask for it!

The long and the short of it is that if you aren’t from Moscow and living rent free and don’t work for a reasonable international company, you are going to have a hard time. I know Russians that work 3-4 jobs in Moscow, just to stay afloat because there are simply no opportunities in their home towns.

A way of life

Corruption is indeed a way of life here. If I want to go a swimming pool, I’ll buy a medical note saying that I am fit and healthy to swim (these things are necessary for Russian pools, gyms etc) rather than go to a doctor and get one. If the police stop me for doing something wrong, I will bribe them rather than go to the station and get gang raped by Russian militsias wearing amusing hats. You can bribe your way out of almost anything here, it’s just a matter of how much. Sometimes tax inspectors will flat out blackmail big bribes from businesses. They can say that if you don’t pay, they’ll say you’ve been tax dodging or something similar and your business will be shut down (although so many businesses tax dodge that they have to bribe the tax inspectors). So what do you do? Pay the bastard or lose your business?

I a friend of mine’s dad had a construction business which used mostly illegal immigrant labour (as do most construction sites) and every time the inspectors would show up he would have to pay them $10000 or they would shut down the operation. The only time they ever shut anything down is when you don’t pay up.

Obviously by agreeing to bribe people like the police and doctors and nurses too (if you want decent service in a hospital at least) you are remaining a part of the problem, not the solution. One Russian who was chatting to my friend was complaining about the Russian police and corruption after which he proudly stated that in Germany they had some corruption too since he had managed to bribe a traffic officer. Of course, he didn’t see that he too was one small part of society that is perpetuating a massive vicious circle of corruption. But the first reaction of many is to offer a bribe.

Politicians

Most politicians in most countries are snakes, you have to be to even to get involved in politics, but Russian politicians really take the cake. The amount of state money these fucks manage to misappropriate and steal boggles the mind. The worst part is that they only get caught when they piss off the wrong person because everyone who knows anything is financially taken care of. These guys are living well off their theft and don’t want anything getting in the way. Recently I read that one politician is on trial for stealing 80 million roubles that was from a fund which was supposed to be for youth gymnastics or something like that. The only real question is: who did is piss off to get “caught”?

Also, it’s not uncommon for politicians to be assassinated because of clashes of interest or political ambition. The real sad fact is that, even if you got rid of all the corrupt politicians, you’d have no one left to run the country. I’m not proposing an answer to these questions, but merely airing my option, which is that 99.9 percent of Russian politicians are robbing this county dry and the only people that are suffering are the average Russians. Your kid has to go to a school that has no money for new school equipment? I wonder why, again the real question is who stole the money: the head of the school or some fund-raping politician? Who knows...

So to end my rant ill just say that all the billionaire Russians you see rocking around in their limos and private jets couldn’t give one solitary fuck about some pensioner whose life is shit. The amount of blood (especially if they got rich in the 90s) and dirt on their hands is immeasurable and they will bleed this country dry for as long as can or until some other oligarch takes them out.

Sad, but true.