In the post-war years, corruption in the USSR took shape into a clear system tied to mutual responsibility. This is especially noticeable in the example of the situation in Leningrad and the region. Moreover, all kinds of abuses flourished, not because they were not fought with, but because they were needed!
High-profile “against” campaigns did not so much fight the scourge as provided a pretext for eliminating political opponents. In the meantime, the internal party games lasted, the people dragged the yoke of the consequences of the arbitrariness of the ubiquitous corruption pyramids.
Orphans nomenclature
The Leningrad archives of the post-war years say that perhaps the most widespread form of abuse was the so-called self-supply."
Remember the scene in Starsobess from the novel "The Twelve Chairs" by Ilf and Petrov? About the most bashful thief in the world and his wards orphans and old women. After their caustic (from "truth hurts") descriptions of the meeting of interests of the disenfranchised masses in the face of pensioners and the spineless, but tied up, powerful head with orphans, on which the whole virgin land can be plowed up and down, other stories about self-supply, in general then, become superfluous. The virtuosos of post-revolutionary satire have already told everything.
What did domestic criminologists understand by self-supply? This was the name of obtaining additional benefits and privileges that were not assigned to a given representative of the nomenclature by status. "What a marvel!" - someone will exclaim now and will be right. Indeed, from 1945 to 1953, such a practice among comrades occupying at least some leading posts turned into an everyday occurrence. Like a roll call. But sometimes it reached simply cannibalistic proportions. Its consequences were especially acutely felt by ordinary workers of enterprises and structures, who were deprived not because of greed, but in their stomachs.
As, for example, the audit of 1946 showed, the directors of the Shuvalov peat-extracting enterprise in the Leningrad region enjoyed all the opportunities of their official position. While the workers suffered from a lack of food, low wages and a banal lack of tolerable living conditions, the management wrote off the rations for the banquets to the inspectors. It took 778.5 kg of bread, 336.2 kg of cereals, 55.9 kg of sugar and 29.4 kg of meat to lubricate a sales revision apparatus with a gear in one incomplete year, which were carried out according to documents - attention! - as additional food for malnourished workers! For the same purposes, it took 14 boxes of vodka, which was intended to support the peat loaders during severe frosts. Apparently, they misunderstood. It was decided that the rationed "one hundred grams" top should clap for the health of the workers - and then things will go. There were also "our darlings" on posts, where can we go without them, dear ones? For example, the wife of the director Makhov, who did not even appear on the territory of the enterprise, was appointed the chief economist of the same peat plant. Money and cards were brought home to Leningrad.
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It hardly makes sense to talk about other cases, it is enough to substitute other names and numbers for the described one. A similar situation was observed everywhere, both at enterprises, and in the countryside, and in the field of social security. And after the monetary reform of December 1947, it only got worse. They dragged everything that was bad. What lay well - they also did not disdain. In addition to banal robbery and fraud, self-supply led to the so-called "merger of party and economic cadres," that is, the party nomenclature began to act not in the interests of the state, but to please local business executives, receiving a deficit from them in exchange for patronage. This created a serious threat to the system of power, of which the Politburo and Stalin personally were well aware of this.
The city's bribe takes
Further - more: machinations, which were regularly reported by the Leningrad press, contributed to the spread of other forms of corruption, in particular bribery. Gradually, the bribe has become an indispensable part of economic life, becoming a kind of springboard, allowing the top to bypass all bureaucratic obstacles. At the junction of self-supply and petty bribery, a new, shadowy corruption model began to form, which experts on economic crimes describe as a symbiosis of small handicraft and factory production with the interests of state and planned organizations. What does it mean? This means that consumer goods enterprises, supply points and trade organizations, formally remaining state institutions, actually served to satisfy the personal interests of their leaders and employees.
For example, in the Leningrad canteens trust in 1945-1946 a pyramid of ubiquitous extortions flourished, at the top of which stood the director of the trust Legovoy. Body kit and calculation of visitors was an everyday practice, the volume of products stolen by employees was measured in thousands of rubles (a record bar of 50 thousand rubles, taken in June 1946). Moreover, the director, not really hiding, patronized the subordinates caught "hot". The directors of canteens who were dismissed from their posts for abuse were immediately given new jobs. The whole pyramid was supported by a powerful mutual responsibility - everyone was involved. The few honest employees who opposed the theft did not stay long. Moreover, they ousted not only voiceless full-time workers, but also leaders. The most rich bone in the broth of universal duty was the fact that Legovoy had influential friends in the district party committee,shielding a grasping businessman from undue attention of law enforcement agencies.
And there were a dozen of such "legovs" in every trust and farm per ruble. Moreover, often the persons involved in dirty deeds had an extensive network of connections in the criminal environment or one or two articles behind their souls.
Write letters
The widespread suffocating abuse of each and every - from a small fry to a party comrade - squeezed out of the masses a full-flowing slander to the appropriate authorities. Letters from ordinary citizens to control and auditing institutions and newspapers have become almost the main form of pressure on the authorities. They also became the basis for starting real investigations on the ground. Even in spite of the fact that investigations and cleansing against corrupt officials were carried out for the most part on the most egregious cases (the rest were overwhelmed) or when incessant denunciations exceeded the "threshold of patience" of the authorities, it was better than inaction. The reaction in such cases was massive expulsion from the party, removal from office, initiation of criminal cases, etc.
Realizing the danger of the situation, the dishonest bosses, with the help of their patrons, tried to silence especially zealous truth-tellers. And the complainants were also well aware of what they were doing. The manager of one of the households of the Smolninsky district of Leningrad, Makov, became a kind of record holder for the number of troubles for adherence to principles. In 1947, he wrote "where to go" about numerous facts of speculation in housing, after which, of course, he was fired. Surrounded, but not broken, Makov continued to seek the truth. Complaints on his behalf continually fell to all instances from 1948 to 1952. As a result, the former manager of the house so eaten the baldness of the leadership of the local housing administration that 32 criminal cases were brought against him, not without the help of his “own” district prosecutor! When all cases were closed as blatantly falsified,Makov was christened insane and tried to put him in the Yellow House. In 1953, the defendants of dashing abuses were finally caught in a large embezzlement, but, of course, Makov was not returned to the post.
A similar fate awaited the overly conscientious employees of the nomenklatura.
Soviet and party officials could be brought to trial on corruption charges only in cases when their actions became widely known, went beyond all the "limits of decency" or when criminals offered a convenient excuse to remove an unwanted person from a high position. In other cases, the complainant himself had to disentangle the bitter gain of a bureaucratic pot.
Of course, the authorities were not inactive. Back in the 30s in the USSR, the police and state security structures formed a system of effective monitoring of the situation. In the Leningrad Region alone, dozens of criminal cases, including group ones, were initiated on cases of corruption in the economic sphere, housing stock, trade, cooperation, agriculture, and financial structures. The outwardly conniving attitude to corruption in the regions was a natural consequence of the Stalinist policy of weakening the influence of the local party apparatus, which could encroach on the authority of the center. As they say, what they fought for.
Often on the scales of Themis, in opposition to the severity of the crimes, the weight of the unbending argument fell on the scales: "Are ten thousand more dear to you than a good communist?" Under the guise of impeccable loyalty to the party line, self-supplying and covetous people considered themselves entitled to rely with impunity on money from the people. There are many fools, but few hares.
Magazine: War and Fatherland # 3. Author: Ignat Volkhov