I would like to thank Rebecca Griffin, Jeffrey Rossman, David Shearer, William Rosenberg, Melissa Ambricco, and two anonymous reviewers for Slavic Review for tfieir comments on drafts of this article. Research and wridng were supported by the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the Archives of the Hoover Institution, the National Endowment for die Humanities, the Open Society Archives, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, and Rowan University.

1. The various forms of illicit “horse trading” among managers in industry are not discussed in this article, nor is the focus on political bribery and official favors at the highest levels of the party and economic administrations. On informal bartering in industry in the 1930s, see Berliner, Joseph, Factory and Manager in the USSR (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), 160–230 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Shearer, David, “Wheeling and Dealing in Soviet Industry: Syndicates, Trade, and Political Economy at the End of the 1920s,” Cahiers du monde russe 36, nos. 1-2 (1995)Google Scholar; Gregory, Paul, The Political Economy of Stalinism: Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives (Cambridge, Eng., 2004)Google Scholar.

2. The definitive study of the Procuracy and courts during the entire Stalin period is Solomon's, Peter H. excellent Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin (Cambridge, Eng., 1996)Google Scholar.

3. Some important recent scholarship has touched on questions of official corruption in this period. The work of Peter Solomon notes that the party tried to fight corruption when certain prominent cases came to its attention. Solomon, , Soviet Criminal Justice, chaps. 11 and 12Google Scholar. Solomon also describes widespread bribery in the Moscow courts in the 1920s. Cynthia Hooper's important dissertation discusses shifting degrees of public participation in exposing official malfeasance in the party, mostly at die level of the Central Control Committee. Cynthia V Hooper, “Terror from Within: Participation and Coercion in Soviet Power, 1924-1964” (PhD diss., Princeton, 2003). A separate article by Hooper highlights how party leaders were increasingly tolerant of crimes by party officials after the war. Hooper, “A Darker ‘Big Deal': Concealing Party Crimes in the Post-Second World War Era,” in Fürst, Juliane, ed., Late Stalinist Russia: Society between Reconstruction and Reinvention (London, 2006), 142-63Google Scholar. Jeffrey Jones has examined the discourse on the corruption problem in Rostov. He discusses corruption (including perceptions of it) in the Rostov party organization, primarily as reported in the local party newspaper. See Jeffrey Jones, “Tn My Opinion This Is All a Fraud': Concrete, Culture, and Class in the Reconstruction of Rostov-on-the-Don” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 2000), esp. chap. 5. On a related topic, Julie Hessler has written about the “informal” but legal private sector in this period in A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917-1953 (Princeton, 2004). Elena Zubkova discusses public perceptions of a wave of crimes against persons after the war but does not delve into the questions of bribery or crimes by officials. Zubkova, Elena, Poslevoennoe Sovetskoe obshchestvo: Politika i povsednevnost', 1945-53 (Moscow, 2000), 89–90 Google Scholar; translated into English as Russia after the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945-1957, trans, and ed. Ragsdale, Hugh (Armonk N.Y, 1998), 38–39 Google Scholar.

4. Noonan, John T., Bribes (Berkeley, 1984), xx Google Scholar.

5. On such traditions in the late imperial and early Soviet periods, see Kelly, Catriona, “Self-Interested Giving: Bribery and Etiquette in Late Imperial Russia,” in Lovell, Stephen, Ledeneva, Alena, and Rogachevskii, Andrei, eds., Bribery and Blat in Russia: Negotiating Reciprocity from the Middle Ages to the 1990s (Basingstoke, 2000), 79–80, 86Google Scholar.

6. Ledeneva, Alena V., Russia's Economy of Favours: Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange (Cambridge, Eng., 1998)Google Scholar. Ledeneva briefly refers to “economic crime” and blat relations in the 1940s and 1950s as background for die later period. Ledeneva's important work demonstrated die importance of blat as a continuing feature of Soviet life, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. Ledenevawas inspired by the pioneering work of Raymond Bauer, Alex Inkeles, and Joseph Berliner, each of whom worked on the Harvard Interview Project and who noted that corrupt practices seemed to be both necessary and tolerated. They were mainly interested in industry, but their observations also apply to aspects of everyday, civilian life. Bauer, R. A., Inkeles, A., and Kluckhohn, Clyde, How the Soviet System Works: Cultural, Psychological and Social Themes (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), 89–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a discussion of blat in the 1930s based largely on the Harvard Interview Project, see Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “Blat in Stalin's Time,” in Ledeneva, Lovell, and Rogachevskii, , eds., Bribery and Blat in Russia, 166-82Google Scholar.

7. Noonan, , Bribes, xi Google Scholar. The law recognized as “officials” all individuals who were employed in a permanent or temporary position in all political, social, and economic organizations of state, including managers of factories or social organizations, collective and state farm chairmen, and union officials. Soviet law criminalized many infractions by officials that will not be considered corruption in this article. Negligence and other crimes of inaction, the malicious non-fulfillment of contracts, report padding, and the production of shoddy goods, for example, were “official crimes” or “economic crimes” under die Penal Code, but since in most cases they would not have resulted in self-enrichment, they are not treated as “corruption.“

8. Even if bribe-takers simply did what die law required fhem to do, they had still committed a crime. Officials could not be rewarded for doing something that they were obligated to do by virtue of their position. Individuals who offered a bribe could escape punishment if they immediately and voluntarily informed die authorities, revealing the name of die bribe-taking official.

9. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Moscow (GARF), f. 8131, op. 38, d. 299,1. 11 (Materials on combating bribery, 1946-47). After the December 1947 monetary reform and abolition of rationing, the role of money in the economy (and, presumably, in bribery) increased. Before the monetary reform, one encounters more cases of bribes offered in the form of food or goods.

10. For a more detailed discussion of this problem, see Heinzen, James, “A Campaign Spasm: Graft and the Limits of the ‘Campaign’ against Bribery after the Great Patriotic War,” in Fürst, ed., Late Stalinist Russia, 123-41Google Scholar.

11. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 14 (Statistics on convictions, 1937-1956). These documents were recently reprinted in Afanas'ev, Iu. N. et al., eds., Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga: Massovye repressii v SSSR (Moscow, 2004), 1:633, 636Google Scholar.

12. A 30 May 1946 report on the state of bribery in 1944-45, written by Bel'diugina, a consultant to the Ministry of Justice's general courts administration, states that “the quantity of people convicted of bribery (the accepting of bribes and the giving of bribes) in certain republics and in the USSR is extremely insignificant on the whole.” GARF, f. 9492, op. la, d. 478,1. 33.

13. On an unsuccessful campaign to eradicate bribery in the late 1940s, see Heinzen, “A ‘Campaign Spasm.'“

14. Lenin, Vladimir, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed. (Moscow, 1964), 44:173-74Google Scholar.

15. Borisova, L. V, “NEP v zerkale pokazatel'nykh protsessov po vziatochnichestvu i khoziaistvennym prestupleniiam,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 1 (January 2006): 84–97 Google Scholar.

16. For the published 1949 postanovlenie of the Supreme Court, “On Court Practice in Cases of Bribery,” which emphasized that bribery was “a remnant of capitalism in the consciousness of the people” and reiterated the “social danger” of bribery, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 26, d. 10,11. 36-39 (USSR Procuracy correspondence with USSR Supreme Court). For textbooks on Soviet law that took this line, concentrating on crimes by officials and crimes against state property, see Sergeeva, T. L., Ugolovno-pravovaia okhrana sotsialisticheskoi sobstvennosti v SSSR (Moscow, 1954)Google Scholar; Kurinov, B. A., Ugolovnaia otvetstvennost’ za khishchenie gosudarstvennogo i obshchestvennogo imushchestva (Moscow, 1954), 12–13 Google Scholar; Gorshenin, K. P., Sotsialisticheskaia zakonnost’ na sovremennom etape: Stenogramma publichnoi lektsii prochilannoi 17 avgusta 1948 goda v Tsentral'nom lektorii obshchestva v Moskve (Moscow, 1948)Google Scholar; Smolitskii, G. R., Dolzhnostnye prestupleniia (Moscow, 1947)Google Scholar.

17. As N. P. Kucheriavyi pointed out, no articles in Soviet legal journals were dedicated to bribery between 1937 and 1957, apart from one article summarizing a prikaz against bribery in 1946. Kucheriavyi, N. P., Otvetstvennost’ za vziatochnichestvo po sovetskomu ugolovnomu pravu (Moscow, 1957), 6 Google Scholar.

18. On the postwar famine and provisions shortages, see Zima, V. F., Golod v SSSR, 1946-47godov: Proiskhozhdenieiposledstvie (Moscow, 1996)Google Scholar; Zubkova, , Poslevoennoe Sovetskoe obshchestvo, 61–77 Google Scholar, and Zubkova, , Russia after the War, 40–50 Google Scholar.

19. See materials from the Procuracy's anti-bribery campaigns, including GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 299,1. 3; GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 282,11. 62-65 (Procuracy materials on struggle with bribery, 1946-47).

20. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 912,1. 279 (Protocol of closed session of USSR Supreme Court, July 1949).

21. For examples of bribes paid to recover apartments, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 37, d. 4216,1.191 (Letter to K. P. Gorshenin from Procuracy Commission investigating bribery among Procuracy and court employees); GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 299, 1. 3-3ob., and GARF, f. 9474, op. 16, d. 294,11. 27-28 (Correspondence between USSR Supreme Court and the Central Committee on legal and judicial questions). On corruption in Rostov's housing administration, see Jones, “'In My Opinion,'” chap. 5.

22. GARF, f. 8131, op. 23, d. 11, 1. 138, for a newspaper article on a 1946 case in Odessa.

23. GARF, f. 9492, op. la, d. 376, 11. 1-4 (Letter to V. M. Molotov from K. P. Gorshenin, 2 November 1944).

24. GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 299,11.56-57. For a 1949 case involving the Moscow housing administration, see GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 66,1. 4 (Report on struggle against bribery in 1950). For a study of conflicts over postwar housing between returning evacuees and housing officials, see Manley, Rebecca, “'Where Should We Resettle the Comrades Next?' The Adjudication of Housing Claims and the Construction of the Postwar Order,” in Fürst, , ed., Late Stalinist Russia, 233-46Google Scholar. On the abysmal condition of Soviet housing stock after the war, see Filtzer, Donald, “Standard of Living versus Quality of Life: Struggling with the Urban Environment in Russia during the Early Years of Post-War Construction,” in Fürst, , ed., Late Stalinist Russia, 84–89 Google Scholar.

25. GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 299,1. 67.

26. Ibid., 1. 33.

27. Gregory Grossman referred to this giving of valuable gifts to one's superiors and others “in proximate audiority” as a continuous factor in the history of the Russian bureaucracy. Grossman, “The ‘Second Economy’ of the USSR,” Problems of Communism 26 (September-October 1977): 25-40. The phenomenon also went by die name prinoshenie.

28. GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 299,1. 65.

29. In his study of postwar industrial labor, Donald Filtzer states that many people in enterprises were prosecuted for giving bribes to get out of jobs or to obtain phony passports or documents testifying that management had allowed a person to leave a position. Filtzer, , Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World Warll(Cambridge, Eng., 2002), 179 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 299,1. 67.

31. GARF, f. 9492, op. 6, d. 14, 11. 14-15. Also reprinted in Afanas'ev et al., eds., Isloriia Stalinskogo Gulaga, 1:632, 635. These figures include convictions under article 162 of the RSFSR Criminal Code. See also Solomon, , Soviet Criminal Justice, 435-38, esp. n. 70Google Scholar.

32. See the case of N. la. Anisimova, whose husband was sentenced to ten years in 1945 for violating the law of 7 August 1932 (GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 984) and a number of the cases discussed below.

33. People convicted of speculation and theft of state property comprised the majority of the eighteen people arrested for offering bribes in a 1948 Moscow city court scandal. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI), f. 17, op. 118, d. 133.

34. For a summary of these cases by the Procurator General, G. N. Safonov, written in August 1948 to G. Malenkov, see RGASPI, f. 17, op. 118, d. 151, 11. 132-143. Documents pertaining to the investigations, depositions, and hearings are contained in the USSR Supreme Court fond in GARF, f. 9474, op. 7.

35. GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 282,1. 62.

36. Ibid., 1. 63.

37. GARF, f. 9492, op. 1, d. 515,1. 288ob.

38. As these cases indicate, in the years immediately after the war, especially 1946, bribes were often offered in kind rather than in money, or sometimes as a combination of the two. In one case that came before the Party Control Commission, a Russian prosecutor admitted taking gifts “in small amounts” via intermediaries. She accepted gifts of money and food from the relatives of the accused, who came to her apartment to make the offers. One relative in 1946 gave her 500 rubles, a piece of salo, and 900 grams of sausage. The judge acquitted. Another bribe consisted of (among other things) two pieces of salo, 400 grams of butter, 45 eggs, a duck, a chicken, 500 grams of sour cream, and two and a half meters of silk fabric. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii (RGANI), f. 6, op. 3, d. 1, 1. 28 (KPK Protocols of meetings and additional materials, 1952-1956; meeting of 15 October 1952).

39. GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 449, 1. 96 (Procuracy report on the struggle against bribery, 1946-47). One man paid a bribe to have his wife transferred to a prison camp closer to their home city. She was serving a ten-year term. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 912, 1. 246.

40. Zubkova, , Poslevoennoe Sovetskoe obshchestvo, 118-24Google Scholar; Zubkova, , Russia after the War, 76–82 Google Scholar.

41. See, for example, Weiner, Amir, Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, 2001)Google Scholar; Edele, Mark, “Soviet Veterans as an Entitlement Group, 1945-1955,” Slavic Review 65, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 111-37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 882, 11. 219-236 (Case heard before USSR Supreme Court, May 1949).

43. The bribe-taking judge Shevchenko was called krovosos by the wounded veteran Solov'ev at a Supreme Court hearing in 1949. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 912,1. 245.

44. Humphrey, Caroline, “Rethinking Bribery in Contemporary Russia,” in Lovell, , Ledeneva, , and Rogachevskii, , eds., Bribery and Blat in Russia, 218 Google Scholar.

45. Similar attitudes seem to have existed in late imperial Russia. “A refusal to give on die part of die individual would be an act of socio-economic suicide.” Kelly, “Self- Interested Giving,” 81. Kelly also points out that “many Russians, both before and after the Revolution, accepted diat bribery was a fact of life, and that diere was nothing so particularly immoral about it, and especially not in giving bribes…. All in all, the central question for many Russians in the late imperial era was not whether to give bribes, but how to give them.” Ibid., 79-80, 86. Using a color-coded scheme of corruption, Arnold Heidenheimer observes that authorities and populations do not always define “corrupt” behavior the same way. Heidenheimer, , Political Corruption: Readings in Comparative Analysis (New York, 1970), 26–28 Google Scholar.

46. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 1006, 1. 175 (Findings of the Procuracy in the case of A. V. Vol'skii, 15 July 1950). For his sentence, see 1. 222 ob. Fitzpatrick notes that petitioners in die 1930s often cast diemselves in the role of “victims” of one or another agency or official. Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “Supplicants and Citizens: Public Letter-Writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s,” Slavic Review 55, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 78–105 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. GARF, f. 8131, op. 26, d. 10,11. 36-38. Peter Solomon has noted party allegations that some judges were overly sympathetic to those convicted of dieft of state property, and that judges sought ways to reduce the excessive sentences of those convicted of petty theft under die June 1947 law. Solomon, , Soviet Criminal Justice, 428-44Google Scholar.

48. “Nepravil'nyi glagol,” Krokodil, no. 31 (10 November 1945): 7; “Zhestokii romans,“ Krokodil, no. 33 (30 November 1945); “Dali, vziali,” Krokodil, no. 23 (20 August 1946

49. The first two poslovitsy are mentioned in Karpushin, M. P. and Dmitriev, P. S., Vziatochnichestvo—pozornyi perezhitok proshlogo (Moscow, 1964), 4 Google Scholar. An interviewee in the Harvard Interview Project recalled an official citing the final saying to “an acquaintance“ from whom a bribe was demanded. Harvard Interview Project, schedule A, no. 5, p. 16.

50. Humphrey, “Rethinking Bribery in Contemporary Russia,” 221-22. One can speculate that this strong reluctance to label one's own activities as bribery (or to confess to criminal activity of any kind) may help explain why respondents in the Harvard Interview Project rarely referred to bribery but often openly discussed blat relations at length. Such a situation, in my view, contributed to the project's sophisticated discussion of blat, even as it undervalued the role of bribery in Soviet society. For a contemporary comparison, see the work of Jakob Rigi, who, during eighteen months of fieldwork studying corruption in Kazakhstan in 1995-96, could not find a single person who admitted to taking a bribe. Rigi, , “Corruption in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan,” in Pardo, Italo, ed., Between Morality and the Law: Corruption, Anthropology and Comparative Society (Aldershot, Eng., 2004), 109-10Google Scholar.

51. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 912,1. 239.

52. See, for example, GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 1006,1. 175. Testimony of Vol'skii, stating that a payment to a lawyer in the iuridkonsul'tatsiia was a “gift” of gratitude. Prosecutors tried to establish that not only had the parties in bribery cases exchanged money or goods but that they had no prior personal relationship, in order to demonstrate that favors were “purchased” improperly. The accused were then forced to explain how they had innocendy given a substantial quantity of money to a complete stranger. As a certain Ninidze described his situation: “I cannot explain diis contradiction: that is, it turns out that I am sending money to an unknown person and, moreover, that a stranger is living in my house.” GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 912,1. 241.

53. A Kursk bookkeeper recalled bribing the director of his enterprise to receive a “prize” to which he was not entitled in the 1930s. Harvard Interview Project, schedule A, no. 302, pp. 9-10.

54. GARF, f. 9415 (OBKhSS), op. 5, d. 87,11. 241-242 (Letter of D. Lebin to chiefs of local OBKhSS departments).

55. GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 449,1. 91.

56. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 912,1. 277.

57. Lench, Leonid, “Tochnoe dokazatel'stvo,” Krokodil, no. 15 (30 May 1946): 4 Google Scholar

58. See the Ministry of Justice's anguished requests for the training of new judges to replace those killed in wartime, in GARF, f. 9492, op. 2, d. 49,1. 17.

59. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 912,1. 178.

60. Poor compensation of functionaries was considered a major reason for government corruption in imperial Russia, as low pay stunted the development of an official ethos among the civil service.

61. On the 27 September 1946 law, see Filtzer, Donald, “The Standard of Living of Soviet Industrial Workers in the Immediate Postwar Period, 1945-48,” Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 6 (September 1999): 1020-26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62. GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 449,1. 96.

63. Ibid., 11. 99-103.

64. Ibid., 1.99.

65. Ibid., 1.97.

66. One judge said that he found it impossible to refuse a petitioner's request for an illegal intervention in a case once he had accepted zakuski and alcohol at the petitioner's apartment. As he put it, “In this way, in the given situation Semashko gave me a masked bribe—zakuski and drinks—after which it was already too late to deny his request.” GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 912,1.311.

67. GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 449,1. 99.

68. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 882,11. 109-121 (Closed session of Supreme Court, May 1949). The transcripts of hearings are such a rich source in part because Soviet judges and prosecutors were allowed to ask defendants very direct questions, such as “Where did you go wrong?” and “What led you down the criminal path?“

69. GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 449,11. 99-100. The document does not state the crime with which Solov'ev had been charged.

70. The investigator was sentenced to five years and the bribe-giver to two years in prison. GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 449,11. 94, 99. Often, petitioners did not mention money but would instead tell the official “I will pay you back,” “we will not remain in your debt,“ or “you will not be offended.” GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 912, 1. 319 (testimony of Shevchenko).

71. In the late 1940s, David Dallin speculated that blat would not help people accused of crimes under Article 58, because law enforcement officials feared the consequences of improper activity in a political case. Dallin, “The Black Market in Russia,” American Mercury (December 1949): 678-82.

72. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 912,11. 193-194. For an example from the late 1930s, see the respondent in the Harvard Interview Project who claimed knowledge of NKVD techniques and noted, “If it is a political prisoner, no bribe will help.” Harvard Interview Project, schedule A, no. 175, p. 28.

73. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 984, 11. 55 and 162 (Deposition of P. I. Kisliakova in Butyrsk prison, 9 September 1949 [Kisliakova was a witness who overheard Anisimova's conversations with Mushailov in her apartment]).

74. See RGASPI, f. 17, op. 118, d. 151,1. 132.

75. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 912,1. 274.

76. For the return of an advance, see GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 1006,11. 5 and 8. For the case of an intermediary asking for a 25,000-ruble advance on a 50,000-ruble bribe, see GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 984,11. 162-163.

77. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 1006,11. 5-9,169-170. One intermediary, E. M. Velichko, an engineer in the Ministry of Railways, had contacts with L. N. Kudriavtsev, the assistant to the chair of the USSR Supreme Court. Kudriavtsev was later convicted of bribery.

78. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 1006,1. 8.

79. GARF, f. 9474, op. 7, d. 984,1. 163.

80. GARF, f. 8131, op. 32, d. 3, 11. 121-123 (Letter of G. Safanov on bribery in Moscow Soviet housing administration, dated 29 January 1951).

81. Alexopoulos, Golfo, “Portrait of a Con Artist as a Soviet Man,” Slavic Revieiu 57, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 774-90Google Scholar; Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “The World of Ostap Bender: Soviet Confidence Men in the Stalin Period,” Slavic Review 61, no. 3 (Fall 2002): 535-57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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83. GARF, f. 8131, op. 38, d. 449,1. 97.

84. Lovell, Stephen, Ledeneva, Alena, and Rogachevskii, Andrei, “Introduction,” in Lovell, , Ledeneva, , and Rogachevskii, , eds., Bribery and Blat in Russia, 7 Google Scholar.