Corruption, Politics, and Daily Life in the Postwar USSR, 1940s-1960s

FAIN: FT-52834-04

James Warren Heinzen
Rowan University (Glassboro, NJ 08028-1702)

This application requests a Summer Stipend to support research in rare Soviet periodicals and an archive collection located at the Library of Congress. The project addresses the problem of official corruption in the USSR during the 1940s-1960s. This project is the first systematic, archive-based study of corruption in the Soviet Union in any language for these years. The purpose of this project is to situate the problem of corruption and economic crime in Russia in its proper historical and socio-legal contexts, examining corruption by officialdom as an unstudied factor in the late Stalin and immediate post-Stalin years of Soviet rule. The study also reviews popular perceptions of corruption as reflected in letters, memoirs, the press, and popular culture.

Associated Products

“Corruption among Officials and Anticorruption Drives in the USSR, 1945-1964” (Book Section)
Title: “Corruption among Officials and Anticorruption Drives in the USSR, 1945-1964”
Author: James Heinzen
Editor: Eugene Huskey
Editor: Don Rowney
Abstract: This article describes campaigns against official corruption in the late Stalin and Khrushchev periods.
Year: 2009
Primary URL: http://http://www.worldcat.org/title/russian-bureaucracy-and-the-state-officialdom-from-alexander-iii-to-vladimir-putin/oclc/317926852&referer=brief_results
Publisher: Macmillan
Book Title: Russian Bureaucracy and the State: Officialdom from Alexander III to Putin
ISBN: 9780230228849

"The Art of the Bribe: Corruption and Everyday Practice in the Late Stalinist USSR" (Article)
Title: "The Art of the Bribe: Corruption and Everyday Practice in the Late Stalinist USSR"
Author: James Heinzen
Abstract: By drawing on materials in Soviet legal and party archives, James Heinzen explores the phenomenon of bribery in the decade between 1943 and 1953. Bribery, the prototypical type of corruption, enveloped people from all walks of Soviet life. Heinzen examines bribery as a mode of negotiation between common people and officials in the political and social context of late Stalinism.
Year: 2007
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/the-art-of-the-bribe-corruption-and-everyday-practice-in-the-late-stalinist-ussr/oclc/478966793&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: Worldcat
Secondary URL: http://www.jstor.org/pss/20060294
Secondary URL Description: Jstor permanent link
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Slavic Review

““Corruption in the Gulag: Dilemmas of Officials and Prisoners,” (Article)
Title: ““Corruption in the Gulag: Dilemmas of Officials and Prisoners,”
Author: James Heinzen
Abstract: Based on research in the archives of the Soviet penal camp system, this article addresses the phenomenon of corruption among officials of the Gulag in the period between 1945 and 1953. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, which oversaw the camp system, treated corruption as a harmful and dangerous phenomenon that was unacceptably pervasive. The article investigates the varieties and frequency of corrupt activities among camp officials, including bribery, theft of state property, participation in illegal markets and speculation, and embezzlement Gulag authorities' anti-corruption efforts included inspections, audits, and a large network of prisoner–informants. These anti-corruption campaigns were largely ineffective. The article concludes that corruption existed in significant quantities inside the camp system, and that the forms it took were largely the same as in the wider Soviet society.
Year: 2005
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/corruption-in-the-gulag-dilemmas-of-officials-and-prisoners/oclc/363832201&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: Worldcat
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Comparative Economic Studies
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

A Campaign Spasm: Graft and the Limits of the ‘Campaign’ against Bribery after the Great Patriotic War (Book Section)
Title: A Campaign Spasm: Graft and the Limits of the ‘Campaign’ against Bribery after the Great Patriotic War
Author: James Heinzen
Editor: Juliane Furst
Abstract: This article examines a "campaign" against bribery in late Stalinist Russia, focusing on its weaknesses as a result of institutional conflict among law enforcment agencies.
Year: 2006
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/late-stalinist-russia-society-between-reconstruction-and-reinvention/oclc/318418658&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: Link to the book.
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: Late Stalinist Russia: Society Between Reconstruction and Reinvention
ISBN: 0203969685 978

“Informers and the State under Late Stalinism: Informant Networks and Crimes against ‘Socialist Property' (Article)
Title: “Informers and the State under Late Stalinism: Informant Networks and Crimes against ‘Socialist Property'
Author: James Heinzen
Abstract: In the years between the start of the Great Patriotic War and the death of Stalin, the Soviet regime used informant networks in its efforts to halt a veritable epidemic of crimes against state property, bribery, and profiteering in scarce goods. Apart from regular police work, the primary tool for uncovering crimes against state property and official crime was the use of secret informants. The police recruited and deployed average Soviet people as informants to expose or prevent a variety of non-political crimes. Before this research, little was known about the informant network charged with unearthing these transgressions during and after the Great Patriotic War. Scholars have not yet noted the degree to which the nationalization of the economy, together with an ideology that urged the population to defend state property as “the people’s wealth,” required a huge and sprawling informer network.
Year: 2007
Primary URL: //http://www.worldcat.org/title/informers-and-the-state-under-late-stalinism-informant-networks-and-crimes-against-socialist-property-1940-53/oclc/364529658&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: Link to the article on Worldcat
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Kritika: Explorations in Russian History (Fall 2007)

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