Furthermore, there is growing consensus among analysts that even if the power elite wants to tackle corruption, the economic crisis has exacerbated tendencies towards unmanageability of corruption within the power vertical. XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX, told us that the GOR may have waited too long. XXXXXXXXXXXX said that a few years ago, when only millions had been "stolen" from the Russian people (as opposed to today's billions), the GOR could have acted and not sparked public outrage. XXXXXXXXXXXX said that the crisis had made the GOR's task more difficult and the scope of corruption has become unmanageable. As the crisis reduced the size of the pot and the anti-corruption rhetoric increased, some Russians felt that they had best grab as much as they could while the going was good. XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX, noted that the tendency of corruption to evade control by the GOR was not new. In 2006 -- at the height of Putin's control in a booming economy -- it was rumored within the Presidential Administration that as many as 60 percent of his orders were not being followed.
XXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX, said that only a "revolution" could change Russia's current trajectory. He argued that the system had become too sclerotic and too beneficial for too many to allow for change. XXXXXXXXXXXX noted that corruption had even become a positive factor for a substantial portion of society. By taking merit out of the equation for success, it was simply easier to pay for entrance to a university, for a contract, etc. XXXXXXXXXXXX, who has made a fortune in Russia's casino business, told us forthrightly that the "levels of corruption in business were worse than we could imagine" and that, after working here for over 15 years and witnessing first-hand the behavior of GOR officials at all levels, he could not imagine the system changing.
Corruption in Russia remains pervasive and deep-rooted. While Medvedev's anti-corruption rhetoric is a step in the right direction, we have yet to see significant implementation of new measures. Russians appear to accept current levels of corruption and seem inclined to pay up or emigrate, rather than protest. Neither have Russians reacted to the sight of the connected few continuing to indulge in luxurious lifestyles as the economic recession continues to leave most Russians worse off than they were two to three years ago. Nonetheless, the commentary on the GOR's increasing inability to manage the scope of corruption bodes ill for its stated effort to enhance corporate governance and investor confidence.I've been surprisingly troubled by the reaction to my post this summer about Western reporting on Russia. On the one hand, I didn't really expect anything different: people who I expected would be receptive were receptive and most other people disliked it intensely. (It's hard not to forget sometimes that words like "democracy" and "rule of law" actually mean things to people outside of my discursive community, and those people are liable to get upset if I throw them around thoughtlessly like references to an inside joke.) On the other hand, the nature of the pushback suggests to me that my presentation was too tendentious and facetious when it should have been judicious and thoughtful.
- Wikileaks cable 09MOSCOW2823, November 2009
In particular, one comment ran like this: "I'm not sure which resonates stronger here...your naivety, or that you're a pretend academic." As it came from an anonymous poster and was unaccompanied by elaboration or argument, it's hard to tell what the intention here was. The crucial word for me, though, is "naivety." I was writing in a demystifying mode, which implies accusing everyone else of naivety. Could I have been naive too? I can't see how, though of course the nature of the problem is such that I wouldn't recognize it. Could it be that the poster was trying to say that I was naive if I didn't recognize the dead hand of the totalitarian state in some of the situations I alluded to? That seems likely, but from my point of view that interpretation looks naive too.
But I've decided to give this commenter the benefit of the doubt, so I've been thinking about ways by which my interpretation of the subject could be made more incisive. Finally, thanks to conversations with friends and an obsessive reading of the relevant Wikileaks cables, I think I've figured out what I was missing.
My reading of Western reporting on Russia was fundamentally based on the notion that Westerners see only the State in Russia and therefore end up blaming it for all sorts of imagined and real misdeeds, domestic and foreign. To this I implicitly (and quite unreflectively) counterposed a model in which Russia is basically a normal country with an unusually wicked Society, making Society (which includes nationalist extremists as well as oligarchs) the root of most evil and the State a kind of hapless scapegoat.
This, I now see, is both wrong and naive. If it's true that nothing like "The Russian State" was responsible for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, it's also true that Berezovsky can't be blamed in any simplistic way. It seems clear that a representative of state power was involved in some form, and this needs to be accounted for. What's less clear is the motive: the typical argument that Litvinenko was a critic of Putin isn't very convincing, because he was known far more widely in the West (which obviously would not be impressed by his murder using one of the most obviously traceable substances possible).
My new frame of mind on this subject is, alas, not of much use to people who care about the facts of the case, but it does help me arrive at explanations of this and many similar events in contemporary Russia. Basically, there is no State and Society that can be meaningfully distinguished in the contemporary Russian context. This is something historians have long believed about previous periods in the country's history, but the development of democratic forms led people to think a firm distinction would finally develop. What seems to have happened instead is a lot more interesting. Unlike previous periods, where the State carefully nurtured, mobilized, and constructed Society under its wing, in today's Russia Society has been allowed to create its own state.
This means that every politician, from the prime minister on down, is involved with private power blocs, whether financial, criminal, or of some other type. This also means that less unity of action can be attributed to state bodies in Russia today than in any previous period: the murder of an activist is first and foremost resolved politically as a struggle between institutional power bases (such as the Procuracy and the FSB). These are entangled in non-state webs of dependence and conflict that may give the event a totally different significance. (It seems likely, for instance, that business disputes, and not anything as straightforward as great-power politics, were ultimately responsible for the death of Litvinenko and the poisoning of Iushchenko.) Any explanation that stops at the state-interests stage of the analysis should thus be regarded as deeply incomplete, as should any explanation that leaves out the ways that the interests of "civil society" are reflected and find resonance in the power politics of state institutions.
Using this kind of analysis has been much more satisfying than the uncoordinated lashing-out I was doing before, and it has helped me see that even if American officials doubletalk in public it does not mean they're being spoonfed bullshit around the clock. It has also given me some perspective on the problems of cynicism as an interpretive lens for political questions. Because cynicism is always demystifying, it always has to make special claims to insight: you're too dumb to see that the state did it or that the media are lying to you. This has the side effect of removing any possibility of nuance or discussion, since the closet always has to contain exactly one parsimoniously-described skeleton (for instance, "it's the oil, stupid," or "it's American imperialism, stupid," or "it's totalitarianism, stupid"). It's no surprise Noam Chomsky's essential ideas haven't changed in decades—the man is immune to being out-cynicized.
I'm very glad you decided to make your interpretation more incisive; what you say here makes complete sense in terms of everything I've been reading about Russian history. It frustrates me when you, who have such a tremendous knowledge base and the intelligence and perspective to say useful things about it, settle for "uncoordinated lashing-out." I know it's more work to write like this, but I for one appreciate it -- and it's good practice for the book you'll be writing one of these days.
ReplyDeleteWell, the problem is that the "state bad, heroic intelligentsia good" framework is so well-established in Western reporting that it ought to be confronted directly in some way. I suspect I'd lean the other way if I were blogging from Moscow, where the "everything is a conspiracy and the CIA is always involved" view is much more widespread. It does seem like blunt satire was not the most effective tool in this instance.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the case well, but this analysis tracks with my expectations of how things work. The concept of 'corruption' is diagnostic of a frame error, though - what we're talking about is patronage networks, which organize and distribute access to resources according to internal logics of reciprocal obligation and external logics of competition with other networks. This only looks like 'corruption' from the perspective of impersonal 'rule of law' and formal organization, which is a different way of getting things done.
ReplyDeleteWhat you describe about Russia reminds me very strongly of Roman society in Late Antiquity. Is there any recent work on corruption in modern Russian government that you'd recommend?
ReplyDeleteCorruption in the Later Roman Empire has been the subject of interesting work that attempts to place it within Roman society at large -- your comments about non-state webs and patronage remind me very much of this.
Man, I hate that pseudo-objective point of view. Talk to people who actually live in a society where corruption is taken for granted and see if they feel it's just a "different way of getting things done" or if they would prefer some of the "impersonal rule of law" you regard with such hauteur.
ReplyDelete(And as an anarchist I am very aware of the problems with the rule of law; I just don't happen to think bribery by those who can afford it is an acceptable alternative.)
If everyone preferred an impersonal rule of law, everyone would have one. Talk to people in line down at the DMV, or teapartiers convinced the federal bureaucracy is intent on making them cogs in the machinery of state, for thoughts on what the green grass looks like up close. The latter in particular understand perfectly well that equality is a poor substitute for privilege.
ReplyDeleteIn any event, we all live in societies where corruption is taken for granted, since the formal rule of law has never been more than a thin overlay on informal patronage systems. I identify with anarchism and actually agree with the implicit point that balancing the trade-offs of the two systems is probably the best we can do in practice, which is why Greg's willingness to figure out how that's actually happening (or not) in the context of particular real power relations appeals to me so much more than impotent blustering about human rights.
It's possible to call "corruption" "corruption" now because that's what the folks at the top are calling it. But really, it's a phenomenon like blat: when someone else does it, it's corruption, but when you do it, it's just getting along and doing what you have to do to survive. (Ledeneva's book Russia's Economy of Favours is the standard book on corruption and blat in Russia. Blat is a kind of horizontal patronage, and it's been an incredibly important feature of Russian life since the Revolution.)
ReplyDeleteHat, I don't think you're appreciating the subtleties of the corruption question. Russia has always been a country in which "the harshness of the laws is tempered by their non-execution." If strict rule of law were to be magically established everywhere, life for many people would become unlivable. I'm not actually sure most Russians would prefer the impersonal rule-of-law model, since they see concrete benefits from bribery every day.
For instance: the prices for commuter trains on the Moscow-Petushki line are really high, and if everyone who commuted on them paid for a full ticket, it would be impossible for many of them to make a living. So there's an understanding between all the passengers on that line and the conductors that the passengers will buy lesser-value tickets and the conductors, for 50 rubles or so, will accept them.
You might be tempted to object that a lower but more adequately-enforced price would be more efficient. Yes--but in that case people in the relevant quasi-private bureaucracy would have to stop stealing. That in turn requires a large number of changes in the way Moscow government works. The point is that the liberal demand for "rule of law," which sounds like a neat and compact solution to a well-defined problem, actually represents a demand that the entire social and political structure of the country be changed.
In the context of what I said in the post, this means that it will never happen. Liberals, ironically, want the state to do something about it, but it's not possible precisely because of the way private and public interests are intertwined. (Like all the older species of intelligentsia, liberals always start by bemoaning the passivity of the population and end by demanding revolution from above.) The current equilibrium is a tolerable accommodation to a problem that's unlikely ever to be solved.
Yes. There's some interesting resonance for all of this in current discussions of James Scott's Seeing Like a State, a critique of high modernist central planning and formal order in favor of local knowledge systems and flexible strategies of making do (which he calls 'metis', I guess because 'bricolage' is so last week). E.g.:
ReplyDelete"By themselves, the simplified rules can never generate a functioning community, city, or economy. Formal order, to be more explicit, is always and to some degree parasitic on informal processes, which the formal scheme does not recognize, without which it could not exist, and which it alone cannot create or maintain (p.310)."
I haven't actually read the book because Scott's act is familiar to me. The quote is drawn from an amusingly chauvinistic review by economist Brad DeLong, who points out how when the Left celebrates the wisdom of the people at the expense of the State it significantly overlaps Burkeian conservatism and Mises/Hayek-style economic liberalism. Which may be embarrassing enough to block learning and stir up the hornets we've seen.
Greg,
ReplyDeleteIf I understand you correctly, the problem with cynicism is its unreflective approach to questions of political psychology and institutional organization, though a cynic might claim that he's already solved the problem with his reductive attitude towards politics and political institutions (e.g., no matter what politicians say, it's all about the pursuit of power or self-interest, etc.). The cynic's demystification seems to commit him to a prematurely generalized view of matters that inhibits reflection and rationalizes inaction. Is that right?
Yeah, that's about right--except for the "rationalizing inaction" bit. I don't think there's any necessary relationship with action either way, except for the fact that the demand to "do something!" can often lead to similar problems.
ReplyDeleteWhich is to say, unreflective action can be as destructive or demoralizing unreflective inaction.
ReplyDelete