James Heinzen. The Art of the Bribe

Endemic corruption in the Soviet Union is usually associated with the Brezhnev period, with the assumption that nothing of the kind could have existed under Stalin because it would simply have been too dangerous. In The Art of the Bribe: Corruption under Stalin, 1943–1953, James Heinzen shows that this assumption is wrong, and that the giving and taking of bribes became a major problem in the administrative and judicial system in the postwar period. Heinzen attributes this not to any abstraction called “Stalinism,” but rather to the concrete circumstances generated by the aftermath of the Second World War. His approach in this valuable new book is like that of an anthropologist: he is interested in the functions that bribery (and its more acceptable cousin, gift-giving) played in the society, and why many people involved on both sides of such transactions thought of them as “consistent with human needs and values” (94). At the same time, this is very much a social historian’s book, based on exemplary and thorough study of the archives of the Soviet procuracy (public prosecutor’s office) and other judicial, party, and government bodies, including the previously unstudied Department for Struggle with Theft of Soviet Property and Speculation (OBKhSS) under the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

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