Lorraine Wu and Zahra Kamaruddin
Boris Yeltsin: From the very
beginning, he had declared
war on corruption. He
instigated campaigns and tried
to stop the discrediting of the
state that resulted from the
glasnost policy. However,
corrupt seems to be a
traditional aspect of any
regime, and Yeltsin diversified
corruption even more under
his regime.
Corruption under the Yeltsin regime became much more
diversified. Besides the traditional form of rule evasion,
gift giving and nepotism, it contaminated the media and
the electoral system. Even though, the centralised
economy and single party regime had given way to a free
market and elected democracy – (Yeltsin himself was
democratically elected by the people of Russia),
corruption was persistent where bureaucratic, economic or
political policies were linked to the state.
After the 1991 coup and the opening of a new political era;
corruption had changed only in scale and not in character.
There was persistent collusion (secret or illegal cooperation)
between the financial and political worlds. This is ironic as the
state was meant to be “democratic” but in reality it was not.
Many rumors about corruption and bribery surrounded Yeltsin’s
re- elections. In 1996, in return for tax exemption and greater
investment opportunities, Russian banks offered Yeltsin
incumbent control over the media. Moreover, in the year that
followed the elections, the banks managed to consolidate their
power by funding the government in some of the most strategic
areas one of which was the area of national security.
There were also systematic misuses of power on the
local level along with nepotism. He forced the
government to develop day to day policies and he was
able to install his own men in key political and financial
positions in order to maintain his power base. He
maintained the tradition of patronage (the power to
control appointments to office or the right to privileges)
and nepotism and the collusion between political and
financial worlds under his presidency.
These traditional aspects of Russian governance have
encouraged systematic:
 bribery, insider dealing, rule evasion, and economic
crimes at all levels of the state.
 the state policy of patronage, which was meant
under the Yeltsin regime to create a coherent ruling
elite, led to the paradox of cronyism in a market
economy, where one would expect competition and
new rules of recruitment. Not only has the alliance
between financial institutions and politicians never
been hidden, but it has also become systematic
from the federal government down to the municipal
level.
Most of the “economic crimes” of the Soviet regime took the
form of bribery, gift giving, and rule evasion, corruption after
1988 became more diverse. It involved all kinds of deliberate
transgressions of the laws connected with the implementation
of the market: insider dealing, misappropriation of public
funds, and, more importantly, conflicts between state and
private interests. Corruption under Yeltsin did not, in fact,
change in nature and remained state-generated. In the minds
of businesspeople and industrial managers, what seemed to
be the cause of persistent. In the absence of appropriate
legislation, resource allocation remained in the hands of
government officials who were the only ones to decide which
strategic enterprises would be privatized and what the rules
of access to them would be.
Yeltsin also took advantage of the traditional absence
of a balance of power and frequently resorted to nondemocratic means. On various occasions, the president
gave free reign to the executive branch arbitrarily to
govern the country, individual regions, and cities.
Yeltsin’s granting of virtually unlimited power to his
allies was a means to carry out his democratization
policy in an institutional vacuum. But this eventually
led to an unforeseen situation in which, both on the
federal and the local levels, representatives of the
executive branch eventually developed a quasiabsolute power and stopped obeying the center.
Gregory Yavlinsky, the liberal parliamentary leader,
had this to say about Yeltsin’s regime :"The
government that was formed was without any clear
ideology. It was neither red, nor white, nor green. It
was based solely on personal greed. You got a system
that was corporatist, oligarchic, and based on
monopolized property rights and semi-criminal
relationships."
Boris Yeltsin presided over what Paul Klebnikov described
as "one of the most corrupt regimes in history”.
Given privileged access to "privatized" state property, the
clique around Yeltsin amassed fantastic wealth. The one who
perhaps profited the most was Boris Berezovsky, whose
methods were described by Klebnikov:
"Using his access to the highest officials of the Russian
government and his reputation as a close friend of the Yeltsin
family, Berezovsky hammered away at the privatization
projects that would put key state industries in his grasp."
Yeltsin’s moment in 1991
(Moscow)