The following letter by S.V. Arbuzov to I.V. Stalin is an important document which sheds light on the inner workings of Soviet society in the post Great Patriotic War period. It is well known that the Soviet people paid a heavy price to win the war against Nazi Germany and her allies, and the Soviet economy was severely weakened. This gave rise to many negative tendencies, like increased criminal activity. In some parts of the country, criminals effectively ruled over the population, and even in Moscow organised crime posed a big challenge for the Soviet police. Another problem was rampant corruption, which spread widely in the Soviet administrative apparatus.

Honest Soviet people, like Arbuzov, were alarmed to see these developments, and they appealed to the CC of CPSU (b) and Stalin personally to take urgent measures. The letter by Arbuzov is a part of the monthly compilation of letters, which were selected by Stalin’s Secretariat from all the letters which were sent to his name during a particular month. An opis (catalogue) was made on these letters with short descriptions about each of them and notes to whom it was sent for decision. In August 1946, the Secretariat made a compilation of 42 letters. As we can see from the opis, most of them were sent to other members of the Soviet leadership, such as A.A. Zhdanov, L.P. Beria, A.A. Kuznetsov, A.A. Andreev, A.I. Mikoyan, N.A. Vosnesensky, N.S. Khrushchev etc. Five letters were selected and sent directly to Stalin. Among them, there were letters about some small matters and two letters about widespread corruption in Soviet society by P. Golub and by Arbuzov.

A letter by Golub, an old Party member (since 1921), focuses mostly on economic problems of the sovkhozy and hard life of ordinary Soviet people. Because of problems with accounting (records keeping), it was difficult to say how much products sovkhozes produced, and this created a situation where corrupt officials could steal these products (and in some cases, the whole sovkhozes!) and realise them on the market. Narkomsovkhozov itself (the People’s Commissariat of Sovkhozes) participated in this corruption and gave agricultural products to organisations, like airports etc., to receive their services in turn. The war, which devastated the Soviet economy, led to shortages of many essential goods and also to a situation where wages were paid not in money, but in products. Workers sold them on the market, and earned money, which created inequality and dissatisfaction. Golub stresses the fact that widespread corruption led to the re-emergence of a bourgeoisie, a class of rich people, who made money by stealing national wealth and they ‘wait for soon coming fundamental economic changes in the country and are ready to become new bloodsuckers’. Among measures to fight corruption, Golub proposed a financial reform which will confiscate large sums of money from these rich people (this reform was carried out in 1947).

This letter by Arbuzov, a former NKVD/MGB employee, focuses more on corruption itself. Arbuzov, like Golub, also mentions that the reason of the emergence of this widespread corruption was war and the devastation of economy by it. Arbuzov wrote in detail about different kinds of bribes in transport, medicine, tailoring etc., and the culture of indifference towards corruption, which he deemed very harmful. He noted that corrupt people were a rich ground for recruitment by foreign intelligence agencies, and that corruption led to dissatisfaction and disappointment among the working class. Arbuzov proposed a mass crackdown on bribe-takers (including the death penalty for the biggest among corrupt officials), which should frighten them and after that to organise an education campaign among the masses about zero tolerance to corruption.

Arbuzov made an important note about the reasons behind the re-emergence of corruption during the war. He criticised the ‘economist’ approach according to which corruption spread only because of shortages and argued that even with shortages it was possible to have fair distribution of goods. The reasons behind corruption, according to Arbuzov, were: bureaucratism (when officials saw themselves as ‘kings’ who could do whatever they wanted), lack of control from the Party, the trade unions and control organisations (he mentions that there was no Rabkrin anymore) and a culture of liberal approach to corruption, which developed in recent years.

He warned about the idea that corruption will disappear by itself after the economy would recover. It will only take new forms, which could be even more dangerous. However, Arbuzov didn’t make a connection with the restoration of capitalism and emergence of new bourgeois class, which was made by Golub. He only wrote that corruption is incompatible with socialism and should not be tolerated in Soviet society.

This connection is important. Corruption in socialist society is different from corruption under capitalism in that sense that under capitalism it means just ‘dishonest’ competition on the market (or in case of lobbyism, it could be even legal). Under socialism, corruption means the re-emergence of market economy and thus capitalist relations. For example, there is a socialist enterprise which officially belongs to the whole Soviet people. But in reality, with a corrupt manager at its head, it is his own little kingdom, and he uses its resources for his personal gains. These means that capitalism is effectively restored, although formally this could be still a ‘socialist’ enterprise. When such enterprises connect through the market, we have a market economy (capitalism) existing alongside with a socialist planned economy and stealing resources from it. Socialism exists only on paper, but in reality, it is capitalism.

As we know since 1953 the Soviet economy gradually moved in the direction of a ‘socialist market economy’ where relations as described above were legalised and became normal (see the article by Vijay Singh https://revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/marksoc.htm). This was the first step towards the full restoration of capitalism, which came after 1991 when state property officially became private property, and former managers became capitalists.

In the whole Soviet period we see a constant struggle between those who advocated decentralisation of the economy and the increasing autonomy of enterprises, and those who stood for centralisation and directive planning from above (see the above mentioned article by Vijay Singh and the letter by V.G. Grabin http://maoism.ru/13498). The issue is complicated. One of the reasons behind economic reforms during the Khrushchev era was the desire to raise the living standards of Soviet people which remained quite low (Golub mentions the poverty problem in his letter). It was the correct idea, however, the means to achieve it were chosen badly. In modern Russian publications about the Soviet economy this is a recurring theme, that to raise living standards it was necessary to introduce market reforms. However, this explanation only shows the bourgeois thinking of our academia and even some communists, because it is unimaginable for them that it is entirely possible to achieve this goal within a planned economy (see the above-mentioned letter by Grabin on how to increase productivity). To the credit of Golub and Arbuzov it can be said that they never thought about legalising market relations, on the contrary, they defended socialist principles. Sadly, fifty years later, during Perestroika, it became a common view that the only way to save the Soviet economy was to make it a truly market one (this view still holds till today).

Another issue touched upon by Golub and Arbuzov was the new bourgeoisie which emerged thanks to corruption. Of course, it was this class which was behind the market reforms and bourgeois counter-revolution in the USSR. It consisted of corrupt party and government officials, managers of industrial and agricultural enterprises (sovkhozes and kolkhozes), the bourgeois intelligentsia, even workers and peasants who were involved in these black market relations and benefitted from them, and of course criminals. All these social strata later became the new Russian bourgeoisie which rules the country today.

It would be silly to limit this new bourgeoisie only to Party ‘bureaucracy’ because 1) not all Party leaders were corrupt, 2) corrupt Party officials were not the only members of the new bourgeoisie class. Still, Party apparatchiks played an important role during the Khrushchev reforms and served as his main social base. In fact, his rabid rhetoric against repression during the Stalin era was mainly to appease this kind of people. There are interesting documents which show that even in the 1940s corrupt Party officials already made pleas that they were punished for their corruption ‘unjustly’ and likened their punishment to a ‘new 1937’. So when 1956 came, they could be sure that they could rule their ‘kingdoms’ as they please with little interference from above. This is what Soviet Union became during the long Brezhnev era – a situation which was impossible under Stalin. Honest Party leaders, on the other hand, were purged during the 1950s and removed from their positions in the leadership or even from the Party (and with them many other communists and honest managers like Grabin). So it could be said there was an acute class struggle inside the Party itself.

Where does corruption come from? Arbuzov mentions that one of the reasons was the lack of political education, the abandonment of ‘Leninist-Stalinist zero tolerance to all kind of wrongdoings [crimes]’. It shows that the repression cannot end this problem forever, because it will re-emerge sooner or later under the ‘right’ conditions. The reason is bourgeois thinking, the culture of individualism and egoism which remains among the people, even workers and peasants, after the revolution when the means of production (basis) became socialised. The only way to destroy this culture is to continue the revolution in the superstructure.

“Bribe takers should be caught and executed!” (V.I. Lenin)

Dear Iosif Vissarionovich,

The war that has ended, has brought with it, along with huge patriotism and mass heroism of the people, unfortunately also some ills of the old society regime. One of the most screaming out among them is the bribe taking that has become wide spread in our country.

Working for several years in the organs of the NKGB/NKVD and already while studying in the Party High School, I have witnessed many manifestations of bribery and have found numerous evidence of these facts from those whom I have met.

The huge scale of bribery in our country and its damaging consequences for the state are forcing me to address with my long carried thoughts, you personally and you only.

The bribery has penetrated all the pores of life of our society and has taken the form of unwritten citizenship

The danger of its scale is characterized by the fact that even people who were born in Soviet times and do not know the fundamental inadmissibility of this evil in the Soviet state or the harshest past struggle of the party and the Soviet state against bribery at the beginning of the establishment and strengthening of the new system, have taken this path.

I’d like to note that at that time’s fierce struggle against bribery and the created atmosphere of hatred towards all kinds of manifestations and carriers of evil, had made bribery back then nullified. It disappeared. And it’s no wonder because all kinds of measures were used in the fight against it. If bribery, bureaucracy were the subject of discussion at meetings, conferences, congresses, such a struggle at the age of 1520 before the Patriotic War brought up for our people – from scientists to the illiterate – a feeling that bribery seemed to them as unthinkable as treason to the Motherland, or figuratively speaking, bribe takers and bribery seemed to be associated among Soviet people with the concept of leprosy and the leper. It was a profound shift in public consciousness.

During the war, bribery was again born and somehow quietly crawled into our life, and then it spread widely. I could not witness the arbitrariness of bribe-takers in the civil war and some time afterwards. They say that it was colossal.

Of course, in our time, bribery has not reached that scale, but nevertheless it is enormous, and impossible to tolerate, if not from the point of view of the scale, then in principle, because of its inadmissibility in Soviet society.

In expressing my thoughts, I can’t mention specific facts, names, not only because I don’t wish to clutter up the letter, but also out of fear that the document, as is often done correctly, will be sent to the appropriate body “for investigation and action”, and with less chances will reach the destination. And such an outcome would be sad, since I am guided not only by the desire to punish individual carriers of evil, but by the desire of eradicating this social evil completely.

At the same time, I am fully aware that such bodies as the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of State Security, the Prosecutor’s Office in dozens of memos can give hundreds of facts.

Forms of bribes:

Bribes now take the form of money or in kind. During the war, the bribe in kind was very common.

The latter is more harmful and dangerous. Firstly, it is several times superior in value to the monetary form, since the market value of products or things is extremely high.

Secondly, its source is the pocket of the state. Such a bribe can be given only by the people who manage material assets – directors of canteens, shops, food and commodity storage bases, quartermasters, all kinds of main suppliers and suppliers, etc.

Recently, the prevailing distribution of bribes has taken the form of money.

New in word formation:

In different places, a bribe has different names. Say, in the Gorky region they will not say “to give a bribe”, but “to give a derbanka”.

If, for example, a business executive needs to select planned funds in the supplying organization in full size and of the right quality, then they say, it is necessary to arm yourself with a derbanka, otherwise you will get not what is needed, but what is given.

The same word is in use in the Middle Volga region.

In the North Caucasus and in the Lower Volga region there is a prettier name – “to thank in return”. First, the request is stated, and then men say “Please do it, Ivan Ivanovich, and I will thank you in return” Gratitude often means 2-3 thousand roubles.

In Moscow and the surrounding areas, as far as is known, there are no shifts in word formation. The old name “to grease” continues to be in use.

There are 9 main areas of predominant distribution of bribes and methods of giving:

1. The court and the prosecutor.

A bribe is given in order to hush up the case, say, of thieves, robbers of socialist property, to mitigate the punishment of the guilty or to acquit them, to achieve the right decision for the plaintiff, etc.

A bribe is given along with the application and documents and must be beneath them in an envelope, in the absence of witnesses. Another way – a bribe is brought to the house. There are even intermediaries.

2. Police.

A bribe is given in the following cases –

a) to obtain a residence permit, when there is no legal basis for this. A bribe is handed through an intermediary or in person.

b) upon issuance of a pass (this was especially common during the war). The method is the same.

c) during the red-handed arrest of thieves, speculators, swindlers, robbers of socialist property, hooligans. This bribe is more common and is given more openly, without observing the precautionary rules. With speculators, it is often charged in kind.

d) to conceal the results of a successful search or to give a warning about a search.

e) in the presence of violations of relevant decisions by business executives. A bribe is received by inspectors, district police officers, etc. Often in these cases, a bribe is given in a more decent manner. For example, the use of scarce goods and products through the base or store of this system is provided. By the way, such a “bribe-in-advance” is often provided to other officials, and even to another apparatus, if only they are vested with the powers of control and inspection.

3. Some ministries.

A bribe is given

a) in order to carry out the return to Moscow or another place of an employee, say, from a distant military factory who was evacuated there since the beginning of the war. A bribe is given to senior employees of the ministry or factory for paying for a “recall” from the authorities, for a fictitious business trip. “Recall” is paid at a rate of 3 to 10 thousand roubles, “dismissal” at the plant from 2 to 5 thousand roubles.

b) for the preferential receipt of scarce materials, a bribe is given in the form of “innocent” gifts, sometimes in cash.

c) for the successful and quick approval of accounting and other reports. A bribe is given in the form of all kinds of gifts – commodity products of factory shops – consumer goods or subsidiary products.

d) for fictitious business trips issued for a trip for purchasing food products for the purpose of speculation. Payment is in money and in kind.

4. Transport organizations.

Bribery hype spread to monstrous proportions.

Bribe is taken

a) for receiving railway and shipping tickets.

In Moscow, there is a “black exchange” at stations. Intermediaries of bribe takers are porters, employees of train stations and stations, relatives and acquaintances of cashiers. The bribe was established from about 200 to 1000 rubles or more, in excess of the cost of tickets.

b) for compassing tickets – the rate and method of obtaining the same.

c) in the left-luggage offices – for the reception for storage of suitcases and bags of food

d) at trans-shipment, nodal and ordinary stations for excess baggage and for fast shipment. Charged by porters – receivers of money and kind.

When sending night trains, a bribe is charged without any disguise and is stored in specially divided chests, boxes under tables.

e) for the transportation of passengers without a ticket in international and soft with reserved seats, or hard wagons of long-distance trains, often in the compartment of the controller-inspector, in corridors and vestibules. As I have repeatedly seen in trains, a bribe is charged by train conductors quite openly, without a twinge of conscience – from 100 to 1000 roubles per passenger.

f) is charged by the drivers of all the country’s trucks and even of passengers cars, “without a host”, outside the city. These so-called “left” trips I also consider to be a bribe. A bribe is taken openly, for example, from 10-20 people who got the lift. And the jackpot for one trip in one day turns out from 1 to 3 thousand roubles or from 3 to 5 thousand, depending on the route and distance.

During the war, this bribe was levied in vodka.

In the film “Liberated Land” there is a frame that causes the Homeric laughter of the audience. The boy, desperate to stop passing cars by lifting his hand, suddenly, without any malicious intent, raises an empty bottle. The effect was instant. The audience here laugh because during the war it was too familiar a picture of the country’s roads. The striped stick of a policeman does not have such magical power to stop the car as a raised bottle of vodka in the hands of a little peanut.

It is known that the chauffeur is often so brutal that, having taken a bunch of women and not content with one requisite (payment) in the middle of the road they arrange another requisition (ask for another payment). under the threat of disembarkation. I remember a moment when our people could not understand why the trucks of the Czechoslovak column in the war not only gave a lift to all those walking along the road, but never took the money offered.

5. Outpatient clinics and hospitals.

A bribe can be given for

a) a fictitious ballot (sick leave letter) for “sick” truants.

b) placement of the patient in a hospital where is a lack of places and without a special referral. A bribe is obtained through the close circles of doctors, by money and food.

6. Housing institutions.

A bribe is given

a) to employees of housing departments for the extraordinary allocation of housing, for providing a larger and better apartment.

b) the bribe is taken by the management of houses for consent to illegal registration, for an extraordinary repair. Given in money and in kind.

7. Sewing workshops – ateliers, consumer service plants.

Literally in all these institutions, without exception, an advance payment is given to cutters – tailors, shoemakers for good and quick sewing in the amount of 50 to 500 roubles and more – even by order. A bribe is given by simple and responsible (in high position) workers.

As if God himself had come up with such favourable conditions for giving a bribe. It is handed over during fitting, in draped, isolated cabins, far from prying eyes.

Incidentally, in 1917, Ordzhonikidze, freed from exile, at a meeting of officials in Siberia in the heat of discussion threw an angry remark “All officials are bribe takers!”

Also, without the word “almost”, with a clear conscience, we can say “all cutters are bribe takers”.

The distribution of the bribe is so great here, and it is so deeply rooted that Muscovites joke if they see a man in a poorly tailored and sewn suit, say “There could be four reasons for this – either he is honest, or he is shy and does not know how to “smear”, or he doesn’t have not enough money, or he is very stingy.”

Sewing in Moscow and other cities is the bottleneck. Apparently, this is the fault of the planning organizations (there have been not enough cadres for several years already!) To sew a dress or even just to change a suit, you have to stand in line, occupying it from day time, from one to two nights, and even then it’s not always with success.

This shortage in tailors only increases the size of bribery. I must say, many of them deftly use this conjuncture. They noticeably often “get sick”. For a bribe, they buy a sick letter from familiar doctors, and at that time they fulfil private orders at home at fabulous prices. This example shows how one bribe taker supports another bribe taker, and how often it is difficult to find the end of this chain – it closes in a loop.

8. There is a kind of “official” bribe.

In many business organizations, especially suppliers, there is a dedicated “legalized” “fund” for bribing influential business executives, accountants, and warehouse managers in other institutions, especially storekeepers who manage the delivery of scarce goods and products by orders.

Funds are created from butter, vodka, sweets, cigarettes, scarce consumer goods, etc. A bribe is given secretly or openly, depending on the impudence of the recipient.

For example, let’s say, at the warehouses, it’s impossible to get fresh fat mutton even if you have an official letter for it, but you don’t bring cigarettes or scarce products-goods. If you did not give a bribe, you will leave instead of lamb with bad corned beef or another substitute, or at best with lean skinny lamb. If you were too “stingy” to give the “gift”, then you won’t choose complete order of allocated funds and the right quality.

Having an order with all the seals, but not having thanked the accountant of the collective farm, state farm, the supply agent risks filling his car with only potatoes, and even that of the worst quality. He will leave without cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini and other scarce delicacies.

Knowing the power of the accountants of Moscow region, vegetable collective farms and their chairmen, smart suppliers do not even go to those farms without kilograms of butter, vodka, and other little things. In these “warm” places on collective farms near Moscow, as a rule, skilled accountants and “businessmen” have settled.

9. Finally, a bribe is awarded in order to receive gas (petrol) in excess of the limits at the warehouses and petrol stations.

These operations are often involving, both as givers and as recipients, the heads of the automobile depots, convoys, but most of all the drivers working “to the left.” (illegal private trips)

I will not list other areas of bribery, from my point of view, they are not so different. There are indications that financial inspectors receive bribes, bailiffs who directly enter private houses, their paths are truly mysterious.

Very often, the further from Moscow, the more arbitrary are the bribe takers. Bribery has significantly spread in the border republics, especially in the Central Asian republics.

The facts of the high prevalence of bribery are well known in the Soviet and party apparatuses. This fact can serve as evidence of this. Talking this winter with the head of the Armavir city police department, I turned to him with the question “Why don’t you arrest all bribe takers?” He replied “Well, it’s very simple. You won’t be able to catch them all. If you catch all the bribe takers, there won’t be enough place in the police cells. Now, let’s change into civilian clothes and in exactly half an hour I will catch for you 2-3 bribe takers.”

Who are the bribe givers?

I do not set myself the task of establishing which category of the population is most affected by bribery, but I want to note the shameful fact that the Communists and the guardians of revolutionary legality are also bribe givers. They are not shaken by moral indignation at the sight of a bribe taker. They look at his and at their own deeds as a normal occurrence. This means that there is a far out growth of this social ugliness, if a sense of tolerance and indifference has become so developed.

I know the employees of the NKVD and the Prosecutor’s Office who give a bribe.

I know the party organizers of the Central Committee of the All Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, who, having arrived to study, paid bribes to the police, house managers, for registering their wives in Moscow. I know the responsible workers of the apparatus of the authorized CCP who gave bribes. For example, in the shoe and tailor workshops of the Spetstorg of the NKVD during the acceptance of the order.

The places under the shelves were filled openly with bottles of vodka “for speeding up” the tailoring of items. A money bribe for sewing a suit on an order is an ordinary occurrence.

By their actions, workers in the organs of revolutionary legality sanctify bribery and, as it were, give it a legal character. From this, inveterate bribe-takers take wings, while young ones become even more corrupt.

Noble motives of bribery.

The force of penetration of a bribe (into our society) and its vitality are characterized by such a fact. In January of this year, I went to the North Caucasus for an election campaign. In Krasnodar, I found out the paradoxical fact that one of the trains in the South, served by a brigade of Komsomol conductors, is culturally equipped, with a radio installation using ... proceeds from a bribe! 16 thousand roubles was easily collected by the Stakhanov youth team and contributed to this matter.

Talking with the secretary of the party committee of the railway junction station, I asked him where the brigade had taken such an amount. The interlocutor, unspeakably surprised at the naivety of my question, laughed, replied, “Well, don’t you know, because these are train conductors!” He pointedly stressed on the second part of the phrase, and then explained the origin of the funds.

The Stakhanov movement and bribery are incompatible things. Although the Komsomol members were driven by a noble desire, a bribe remains a bribe and does not become anything else.

Who can say that having collected the amount of 16 thousand roubles, the conductors did not leave a more substantial jackpot for themselves?

Is it possible to guarantee that some of them, deducting a “contribution” from their “income”, will not catch up tomorrow by larger withdrawals from passengers? However, the local party committee did not delve into the source of this money, but only supported this initiative. Party organizations got used to the existence of bribery and do not pay attention to it.

Reasons for the widespread bribery.

The indisputable truth that this evil is a relic of capitalism. But why did bribery spread in our society during the war?

Some see the reasons for this only in the rare features of the military time economy, in the lack of consumer goods and other goods as conditions that allegedly encourage bribery and venality.

This point of view is incorrect, because it is not a determining reason. Of course, a bribe is better inculcated where demand exceeds supply, where there is a shortage of material and spiritual goods. I am making a mention of the “spiritual” because often theatre tickets and rare books are also obtained through bribes.

It is characteristic that in order not to offend the god of art by unscrupulous operations and to soften his holy anger, his fans and priests often arrange a bribe not in the form of “despicable metal”, but in other offerings. On the principle of “I’ll give this to you, you’ll give that to me.” By the way, this form saves not only from the wrath of Apollo, but also from the police and prosecutors. For example, “products are not a bribe, but a gift,” they explain in all such cases.

And so I believe that the conditions of supply and demand play a role in spreading of a bribe, but not the decisive one. Under our system, even with a deficit, a legitimate, equitable distribution of public goods is possible. There is no denying the fact that a bribe is where the one-man management has acquired an ugly form, “I do what I want,” “my hand is sovereign.” Bribery is where control and verification by party, trade union organizations and inspection bodies are weakened.

These circumstances led to an unbridled distribution of public wealth. I think that along with this and on the basis of this, a bribe was revived and developed. And the indifference to it and the lack of struggle with it allowed it to grow to threatening national proportions.

The important reasons that contributed to the spread of bribery and the strengthening of indifference include the fact that in recent years many party organizations have almost stopped raising and developing Leninist-Stalinist intransigence among party members for all kinds of outrages.

It would be right to say that bribery is strong because men do not fight it.

The recent belated step of the prosecutor’s office and the published announcement of sentences to several bribe takers still does not solve the problem.

Below I will show that this event only scratched on the surface, or rather, just pricked the bribery, but did not kill it. It seems to me, maybe I’m mistaken, that this event was prompted and is not at all an initiative of the Prosecutor’s Office.

The fruits of indifference.

Tolerance and indifference to a bribe are extremely dangerous.

These phenomena were especially rampant in the war and have not vanished at the present time.

Even Pravda once objectively played a contributing role in reinforcing this indifference.

In March 1943, an article appeared in the newspaper by Gudov, who wrote about a number of shortcomings in industry, and among other things, he then signalled that a mass of “pushers” had accumulated at the country’s enterprises to push orders from their factories. Moreover, they all chose gifts to the director, administration as a means of pushing.

There is no doubt that “gifts” are a bribe and are dozens of times worse, since “generosity”, using your famous words, comes “at the expense of the state”.

It seemed that Pravda would display a noble indignation and desire to punish evil and will place under the article a report on the show trial of the most odious of them. Nothing of the kind happened after. Only in the article itself there is a casually dropped platonic wish – “of course, we must fight this.”

Encouraged by general indifference, the bribe takers became more and more insolent, and bribery grew.

The economic implications of bribery.

The sad consequences of bribery include the huge material damage to the state when funds for bribes are drawn from its pockets.

Nor can one turn a blind eye to the fact of an injustice in the distribution of the country’s material wealth, when a significant part of the social product is awarded in the form of a bribe to villains whose “useful” activity is the sale of conscience.

In fact, it is difficult to come to terms with the fact that a social product, created by the efforts of honest people, reincarnated as cottages, home furnishings and other property, settled during the war in the pockets of the infamous enriched degenerates.

Below I will try to express my suggestions about this.

Political and moral consequences of indifference and lack of struggle against bribery.

As a result of the growth of bribery, the lack of struggle against it and the established dominance of a mood of tolerance, the sharp reaction of the Communists to outrages, malicious or backward attacks against the Soviet government or Soviet reality has noticeably dulled.

If, for example, 15 years ago, a certain type, say, in a store’s queue began to distribute unthinkable things, such as all sleeping on collective farms under one blanket, he would receive a worthy rebuff from the Communists, and some may would escort him to the state security organs. But if now in the queue they are conducting an equally harmful conversation, in the spirit that “there was no truth, there is not and there never will in the world”, “nowadays it’s always you’ll scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours”, “now everywhere they are stealing, they are taking a bribe,” then I often observed that the communists find themselves in some kind of awkward position. The present communist will not scold the rumour spreader, but will simply endure, without saying a word. Although a bribe, that is, bribery and venality seem like an awkward thing in a socialist society, just like a common blanket. Nevertheless, the communist will not ask the whisperer a revealing question – in what institution was this? But he does not really need to ask him. Mentally discarding generalizations, he often believes this conversation, for so many times he himself has been a victim of bribery.

So the conditions for the prevalence of bribery, the lack of an effective fight against it, as well as the avoidance of instilling Leninist-Stalinist intolerance for this ugliness, make our Communists, on the one hand, unarmed, on the other hand, silent before the facts of unhealthy propaganda, sometimes having an anti-Soviet orientation.

There is no need to show how a bribe corrupts a person, cripples his soul, how a bribe-taker ceases to conscientiously work qualitatively if he does not receive a bribe along with the order.

An inveterate bribe-taker is often an unprincipled person, in whose corrupt soul noble patriotic impulses disappear. This circumstance is of great national importance, given the need to preserve young people from corruption by bribery. If you ask yourself, where do traitors of our homeland come from? Bribery, for example, undoubtedly facilitates their preparation.

A bribe taker is a potential traitor to the Motherland.

Having made the first fall, he will naturally go to the second, etc. In his devastated soul, the inhibitory, restraining centres weaken or disappear. If such a person will find himself abroad or in the field of vigorous activity of bourgeois intelligence services, the morally destructive work of a bribe will make itself felt. Even without the conditions of coercion, he is a ripe candidate for recruitment.

For a bourgeois bribe, if you can call it that, it’s several times larger than what is established in our country as a result of supply and demand. Raised sense of venality will only push further on the path of betrayal.

Further, an increase in the manifestations of bribery is embittering workers and reduces the level of their political and moral condition.

The worker, having no means for a bribe, cannot get a suit sewn quickly or well, cannot buy a train ticket, receive certain goods, etc. At the same time, bribe takers are restoring the backward part of the population against Soviet power with their activity.

And along the way, I want to say about some less important things and consequences.

The scope of the spread of bribery and the lack of danger for those who entered on this path is pulling along other minor vices. For example, “getting through connections” has blossomed. Cashiers of shops, canteens, stations, and even the long-withstanding the temptation conductors of public transport stopped giving the full amount of change. Tipping has spread in bathhouses, theatres, train stations, hairdressers and other public venues. All this may be justified by insufficient earnings and maybe not so scary, but nevertheless, this creates perverse morals among employees and reduces the political and moral mood of the low- paid population. For example, a worker cannot count on the good service of a master at a hairdresser. If somewhere in the locker room a citizen in a hat, say, gets his coats handed over to him politely for a bribe, then the insolvent worker gets his coat thrown at him, with a snort.

Do we need to fight bribery?

Some of those who suffer from liberalism say that bribery will disappear with the growth of the material well-being of the population, and therefore is it worth fighting this evil? Firstly, bribery will not disappear, but only decrease. Secondly, who knows what other forms of abuse these people without honour and conscience will invent or resurrect then? And thirdly, why should evil go unpunished? In addition to all other arguments, it would be an insult to the memory of those who died for their homeland at a time when a bunch of villains were enriching themselves in vile ways.

Bribery is categorically intolerable in a socialist society and must be ruthlessly eradicated. Lenin’s demand for execution, for example, with respect to the largest bribe-takers, must acquire the force of law. Several executions along with other harsh measures could completely eradicate this heinous legacy of Tsarism and capitalism. The blow to this evil, I think, should be of such strength and scale that it would cause every potential bribe taker to feel a febrile tremor of fear with just a thought of taking this path, and those who have entered upon this path, will be discouraged from it. In addition, this blow, in the form of judicial sentences with property confiscation, will allow the seizure of at least part of the parasitically acquired property in favour of the state, and a better excuse for such seizure cannot be invented.

Scientists and Stakhanovites who would then settle in the bribe takers’ dachas will be its far more legitimate owners.

Where to start?

Of course, in the fight against bribery, punitive and educational measures should be combined. But where we you start?

It seems to me that it will be right when bribe-takers behave unbridled, without resorting to tricks, to subject them to universal defeat. Their lack of caution and disguise will only facilitate this matter.

Even the press reports on the convictions of several bribe takers have not yet particularly alarmed them. Mass defeat must necessarily precede the struggle by educational means. An attempt to conduct mass educational work first would only prematurely frighten off the cadres of inveterate bribe-takers and force them to retire from “affairs” or force them to refine their actions.

There is no doubt how it would complicate the struggle of punitive bodies that do not have sufficient experience in catching bribe takers.

With this order of action, firstly, it would not be enough facts for oral and printed agitation. Secondly, we did not have effective confiscation measures yet. Thirdly, strikes would fall not on large bribe takers, but on careless, small one, whose “requisitions” are measured only in tens or hundreds of roubles, and sometimes these are taken not at all out of a sense of money-grubbing and hoarding.

For most of the last and most widespread category of bribe-takers, follow-up measures of public influence and warning will be enough for them to stop their dirty work.

Some stupid and dry formalists, especially in the prosecutor’s office, believed and are still going to use it in the fight against bribery, they say – a tried and tested tool, the selection of testimonies. But since when did bribe takers become such brainless fools, as these formalists believe, in order to take a bribe in the presence of witnesses? Wouldn’t it be more correct to catch bribe takers red-handed – with material evidence? To do this, we need to organize and conduct massive and simultaneous operational work to capture bribe takers. It is necessary to carefully develop and apply several even typical operational combinations for catching them.

Skilful and creative work can successfully bring them to clean water. It would be necessary to make, for example, for operational activities a monetary fund for the delivery of bribes.

Let’s say that the staff has evidence that in such and such institution, for example, a court, there is a bribe taker – a judge. Before catching the offender banknotes are activated by a special commission for such and such a day and hour.

Then this money is either handed over to the briber, together with the paperwork and materials, either through an operational agent, or through an agent randomly involved in a case, or through a specially for this case, urgently recruited person. After the delivery is made, a special team of operatives detains him, either near the house or at work, searches, finds the money, and then charges him. The method is simple and easy to do.

I am convinced that most of the bribery suspects, on whom we have some materials, will be caught red-handed. Witness testimonies will only supplement or finish off one or another bastard. And how many later witnesses will be found against them when the people find out that we are fighting with bribe takers, and which body is fighting with them!

It is appropriate to recall how many fruitless investigations were carried out by the Prosecutor’s Office which is littered with complaints about bribes. For a confrontation with only one witness will not lead to the voluntary admission of guilt by the offender. How many times the Prosecutor’s Office, having started the investigation and charged the prosecution with only one testimony, released the bribe-taker back home, to continue his “labour” activities free!

Operational measures, however, will allow such incidents to be ruled out. But the same formalists can inflame morally with indignation, “How to give a bribe on purpose, it is a provocation!” But why should an operational combination be considered a provocation? Why should we abandon combinations if they are used in many states?

Lenin, in his article “Better less, but better”, responding to such indignants, at the same time wrote about Rabkrin’s methods “... We’ll have to prepare ourselves for work that I would not hesitate to call preparation for fishing, I won’t tell of scammers, but of something like that, and for inventing special “tricks” in order to cover our campaigns and approaches, etc.”

In order for the bribe-takers not to have time to be thoroughly alarmed, one must carefully prepare and conduct ubiquitously organized raids, raids on all establishments where according to available data there are venerable or average bribe takers.

Which body should carry out punitive measures?

Who should and can hold such a mass event? I affirm with all responsibility that only the apparatus of the State Security organs can do it well.

And only then, in the second turn, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the police and the Prosecutor’s Office. Why is that? Firstly, all other organs themselves are in one way or another affected by bribery, so it would be advisable to start the fight against bribe-takers (even if there are not many of them) not by them, but from them.

Secondly, the Soviet intelligence apparatus is better selected, more skilled in conducting operational activities and investigative work, and more conspiratorial.

Thirdly, none of the Soviet apparatus is as knowledgeable, including about bribe takers, as the State Security Ministry.

It may be objected that such work will distract it from its immediate tasks, and that there is no time for this.

It should be noted that the Ministry of State Security apparatus, due to the prevailing objective conditions, is involuntarily daily distracted from its tasks, despite the fact that the agents are sent to uncover espionage and subversive activities of enemy intelligence services. Screaming outrages in many institutions and enterprises lead it astray, makes it write reports about outrages and talk about abuses, bribery, etc. for three quarters of the time at receptions.

Often their attention is politely diverted from this, and they are not recommended to write. But in vain. In accordance with established rules, it is impossible to prohibit devoted and specially directed Soviet agents from presenting sensitive issues. Indeed, the agent may not find a spy, but bureaucrats and bribe takers are at every turn. And the indignation of honest Soviet souls from among the agents of the network of informants finds its outlet in the reports.

And where should they write, there is no Rabkrin, it’s pointless to write to the “offender,” for example, to the head of the institution, and the authority of the Soviet intelligence agencies is great. And they do write, they write weekly, from year to year, not realizing that their “works” are hemmed at best, torn at worst, and only occasionally, information drop by drop gets to the regional party committees and to the Central Committee of the VKP (b).

So, arguments about distraction from special tasks are untenable.

The objection about the lack of time for the operational staff, based on the just stated, also cannot be reasoned.

It is indisputable that nowhere do they work with such a load and even overload as in the bodies of the Ministry of State Security, but it is also indisputable that about 50 percent of the time of operational workers is spent idly, in useless or inappropriate (the ones that don’t serve their goal) receptions.

It can be infallibly said that the daily staff of Moscow filed cases, hundreds and thousands of reports of official abuses, a lot of bribery, etc. This indicates, for example, not only the prevalence of bribery, but also idleness, in terms of special intelligence work, move.

Finally, it is possible also to get such an objection by interested parties that the fight against bribery is not a function of the MGB. But then it should be remembered that in due time the bodies of the Cheka, the OGPU, and the NKVD were entrusted with functions that were completely unusual for them, such as the fight against child homelessness, the tasks of the Central Command and Control Department , and so on. However, the work of these bodies did not become worse from this, and the tasks set were successfully completed.

If about 15 days a month the personnel of the staff goes idle with an apparent overload, then why 3-5 days a month due to the reduction in idle time cannot be used to defeat bribery? Moreover, this task is not permanent, but temporary, transitory. And such evil is not espionage, it can be eradicated in a few months, and the main shots of bribe takers can be “killed off’ in a few days.

Arguing my thoughts, I nevertheless believe that a part of the apparatus, working on particularly important cases, should not be distracted from them at all.

So, if this issue were finally resolved, the fight against bribery should begin, mainly based on the materials of our intelligence agencies. It is known that a special inspection, the SMERSH of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, serving the police, is choking on this kind of materials in tightly packed cabinets and folders. Operational measures would significantly relieve them and significantly close the cases.

Along with this, it would be worth starting the implementation of the facts raised – materials and current reports from the MGB network on employees of the court, police and other important institutions (transport, etc.).

And finally, when the case of exposing the bribe takers will receive some publicity there, all the apparatuses of the Ministry of State Security, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the police, and the prosecutor’s office will fall upon the bribe takers of other systems.

Several subsequent public show trials could serve as the beginning of mass agitation in the spirit of nurturing Soviet people with hatred of bribery and bribery.

Many, in solving the problems of combating this evil, assign decisive, self-sufficient character to educational work. But it seems to me that at the moment this will be wrong, because the roots of bribery are deep now, and the skill and habit of bribe takers are great.

Listening to our lectures, the bribe takers would be like a cat from Krylov’s fable – “And Vaska is listening, but he is eating!”

For example, the Krokodil magazine broadcast in the first post-war issue that it would conduct a merciless fight against bribery, and the Culture and Life newspaper, recently accusing it of its insufficiency, further instructs to combat bribery. All this is good. But it seems that only it (“Krokodil”) can bring down this evil. Of course, laughter is an important weapon, but one should not deceive oneself so far into this. Without severe measures, bribery cannot be destroyed. And the clever feuilleton about this in Komsomolskaya Pravda, “Lyapkin-Tyapkin”, will not solve this problem.

Lenin in 1921 at the 2nd Congress of Political Enlightenment Workers said that the bribe rests on illiteracy, and emphasized the improvement of culture. It would be frivolous to say that now we have the same conditions. On the contrary, the current bribe takers are enlightened, educated people, and bribe takers are literate people too.

Modern bribe takers rely on their own impudence, general tolerance and the absence of effective measures to combat them.

At the moment, I am defending the thesis about the combination and even temporarily the priority of punitive measures over educational ones.

Only along with the use of harsh measures against bribes is it necessary to carry out a broad campaign to educate Soviet people in the spirit of honesty and integrity. To instil in them a sense of contempt for these merchants of conscience, without pardoning the bribe givers. To create an atmosphere of hatred for bribe takers that would rule out bribery and make it impossible.

It is indisputable that bribery is not a terrible force in our society, so that it couldn’t be quickly eradicated. A common, active and successful fight against it, besides all other positive results, will also raise high the political and moral mood of our people.

But only your intervention, Joseph Vissarionovich, will give this struggle a decisive, consistent and mass character and will eradicate this evil to the ground.

With communist greetings

Student of the Higher Party School of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b)
Arbuzov S.V.
August 12, 1946.
Address – Ogareva street, 1/12 , apt 61
House phone number K-4-51-85
(Handwritten note:)

I ask you to excuse me for the lengthy form of presentation and that the letter took some form of research on the issue. But realizing the importance, I would not have been able to compose it precisely and therefore could not have acted otherwise.

Reference – this letter is typed by an employee of the MGB in one copy.

RGASPI. F. 558. Op. 11. D. 870. LL. 114-147.

Translated from the Russian by Irina Malenko.

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