Crime and corruption: Enduring problems of post-Soviet development

Demokratizatsiya, Winter 2003 by Shelley, Louise I

Conclusion

Ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, crime and corruption remain enduring problems for the post-Soviet states. Although they were once seen as peripheral to development, the post-Soviet experience has dramatically illustrated that these problems are fundamental to the course of development. Moreover, understanding the dynamics of the crime problem can provide a key diagnostic tool in assessing social and political stability. The fact that terrorism thrives in regions with rampant corruption makes the problem all the more salient in the contemporary environment.

The rise of the oligarchs and their control of such a significant share of the Russian and Ukrainian economies have eclipsed some of the economic significance of organized crime. But the continued importance of contract killings in key industrial sectors suggests that important operative links endure between the industrial oligarchs and organized crime.

The centrality of the crime and corruption issue was evident to citizens of the successor states before the West was sensitized to these problems. This gap in perceptions was central to the failure to develop effective assistance programs for the Soviet successor states. Demokratizatsiya, in helping to identify the importance of crime and corruption for a Western audience, helped move the debate, and we hope that it contributed to development strategies more attuned to the needs and concerns of the citizens of the former USSR. But often this change in tactics came too late to address the now deeply embedded problems of organized crime and corruption.