“There Was No Corruption Under Stalin”

The conclusion that there was no corruption under Joseph Stalin is often drawn from the logical chain «people were executed for corruption» – «therefore, it did not exist». A typical example of such reasoning can be found in the materials of the 3rd Interuniversity Scientific and Practical Conference held in 2011 in Kazan:

Under Stalin, there was no corruption at all – for any official, abusing one’s position was far too dangerous…¹

However, anyone familiar with the history of law will confirm that the severity of punishment not only fails to guarantee its enforcement but often even encourages its evasion. The primary factor that ensures the enforcement of the law by members of society is the inevitability of punishment for all offenders, which is possible only with a high degree of implementation of the rule of law. Another factor that paradoxically contributes to the myth of low corruption is the manipulative, oversimplified thesis «under Stalin, only thieves were executed» (which raises the question – so was there no corruption, or were hundreds of thousands of «thieves» executed?). Here, we need to examine whether there was corruption under Joseph Stalin and, if so, on what scale.

Historians’ Opinions

Most serious historians agree that corruption during Joseph Stalin’s rule did exist and was manifested, among other things, in the resale of state property by officials, embezzlement of funds, extortion of bribes, trading privileges, positions, and influence, as well as in the use of informal networks and official patronage both to achieve economic goals and for personal gain². For example, in many collective farms, a situation developed in which «the collective farmers regard the chairman of the kolkhoz as the absolute master of the farm, whose orders must be carried out unconditionally, even when these orders clearly violate the rules of the Charter of Agricultural Artels³». Here is what Doctor of Historical Sciences Igor Govorov writes:

An analysis of postwar Leningrad archives allows us to assert that the most widespread form of corruption in 1945–1953 was the so-called «self-provision», meaning the acquisition of additional benefits and privileges not granted to a given member of the «nomenklatura» by status. At most enterprises and institutions, this became virtually an everyday occurrence. An objective inspection of any institution revealed numerous cases of abuse by its leadership⁴.

Candidate of Historical Sciences Alexey Teplyakov writes about corruption in the NKGB–MGB of the USSR during the 1940s–1950s:

The documents of party control bodies, especially the archives of the Party Control Committee under the Central Committee of the CPSU (RGANI. F. 6), contain a vast array of materials on the abuses committed by officials of the punitive agencies⁵.

The opinions of «folk-history» publicists such as Yuri Zhukov or Elena Prudnikova, who dispute the findings of researchers (the reasons for their motives we have described in a separate article), hold no scientific value – their falsifications will be examined in due course in the section «Propagandists of Stalinism».

Facts of Corruption

Let us move on to specific facts recorded in the archives. Here is a case described in the Central State Archive of Saint Petersburg:

At the peat enterprise located in Shuvalovo, during the period from January to June 1946, a total of 778.5 kg of bread, 336.2 kg of grains, 55.9 kg of sugar, and 29.4 kg of meat was squandered on banquets, entertaining inspectors, and self-provision, while officially written off as additional rations for workers. For the same purposes, 135 liters of vodka — originally intended to support peat loaders during severe frosts (100 g per person per day) — were consumed. The director of the peat enterprise, Makhov, and chief engineer Aganin purchased two cows from the subsidiary farm at a price ten times lower than their book value. Cows were sold at the same price to the chairman of the regional union of peat workers, the head of the transport department of the Torfsnab trust, and others. Makhov appointed his wife, who lived in Leningrad, as chief economist of the enterprise. She never even came to collect her salary (money and ration cards were delivered to her in Leningrad). Three individuals officially registered as workers at the enterprise were used by Makhov as domestic servants⁶.

The culprits received party and administrative penalties (no one was executed), but otherwise nothing changed. In 1949, the secretary of the party organization of the Dunai peat enterprise (Vsevolozhsky district), Gryaznov, informed the regional committee that the leadership of the Lengostorf trust encouraged abuses of office in the form of extortion for various services related to obtaining materials⁷.

In collective farms, the situation was similar. In Kapsha district of the Leningrad region alone, during 1949, representatives of the rural management (chairmen and board members of collective farms, secretaries and deputies of village councils) stole 507 kg of grain, 10.5 kg of butter, 87 kg of meat, 27 poods of hay, and 4,000 rubles belonging to the collective farms. For example, the chairman of the «Ilyich» collective farm (Kirishsky district) arbitrarily sold 3 cows and 6 piglets from the collective farm, took 3 piglets for personal use, and spent funds from the collective farm’s cash register at his own discretion. In Pargolovo district, the chairman of the Molotov collective farm, Gurylyeev, during 1949–1950, embezzled collective farm funds and products worth 7,500 rubles. The chairman of the «Krasnaya Nov» collective farm, Belyakov, squandered seed grain worth 5,500 rubles, and so on⁸. Of the 85 pigs allocated in 1947 for distribution to collective farms in the Oredezh district, not a single one reached its destination. All the pigs were «claimed» by district officials⁹. It should be noted that these were the hungry postwar years.

In 1944, Vedorkin, an instructor of the Leningrad City Committee of the VKP(b), obtained a new apartment by fabricating a certificate stating that his previous apartment had been destroyed. As a result, for several years, he possessed two apartments (one with 2 rooms and one with 4 rooms). The family that had previously lived in the apartment obtained by Vedorkin (a war widow, her sick mother, and a child) was, upon returning from evacuation, given a replacement — a single room in a communal flat (a former kitchen)¹⁰.

From 1942 to 1948, E. Nikitina, head of the city department of social welfare, systematically authorized the use of fabrics intended for clothing for disabled veterans to sew suits and trousers for department employees (in 1947 alone, 69 meters of wool fabric, 22 meters of broadcloth, 70 meters of boston fabric, 3 meters of gabardine, 18 meters of cashmere, and so on, were used to make suits for social welfare employees). Funds intended for financial aid to disabled war veterans were also used to pay allowances to department employees and subordinate institutions. In 1947, the total amount of such allowances reached 5,300 rubles. Moreover, vouchers intended for disabled veterans were distributed among department employees (in 1947 — 10 vouchers worth 10,500 rubles). Consumer goods were also purchased with funds meant for disabled veterans¹¹. In 1948, Nikitina was demoted to the position of deputy head of the pawnshop. However, even there, she was caught in large-scale embezzlement and abuse¹².

In the Leningrad dining trust during 1945–1946, a pyramid of systematic extortions flourished, with the trust’s director, Legovoy, at its peak. In all of the trust’s canteens, kiosks, and teahouses, the practice of short-weighting and overcharging customers was widespread. In February 1946 alone, products worth 18,000 rubles were stolen from the trust, and in June – 50,000 rubles. Legovoy directly patronized subordinates caught stealing. Canteen directors, who were exposed by the trade inspectorate for abuses and dismissed on its orders, were immediately given new positions. Employees who opposed the thefts were expelled from the trust, while Legovoy’s «friends» from the district party committee ensured protection from excessive law enforcement scrutiny¹³.

In 1950, the prosecutor of the Roshchinsky district exposed the chairman of the collective farm, Evstikheev (a retired colonel and deputy of the regional council), for buying himself a dacha — a house at the price of a log cabin, squandering collective farm property, selling 6 collective farm houses to outsiders, and so on. District prosecutor Kharitonov submitted materials for consideration of bringing Evstikheev to criminal liability to the bureau of the district VKP(b) committee. However, a representative of the regional committee and district committee secretary Bogdanov defended Evstikheev: «You should look for criminals elsewhere, Evstikheev is not a criminal, but a respected man». As a result, the prosecutor’s motion to bring Evstikheev to trial was rejected. The collective farm chairman got off with a reprimand, which was not even entered into his personal file¹⁴.

The cases mentioned above are only a fraction, taken exclusively from the Leningrad region and limited to the postwar period before the death of the General Secretary. Many more such cases are documented in Igor Govorov’s work, with references to archives, «Corruption in the Conditions of Postwar Stalinism (Based on Materials from Leningrad and the Leningrad Region)». However, it is incorrect to assume that such cases occurred only in the Leningrad region or only in the postwar period. For example, the unprecedented prewar corruption was even acknowledged in a joint resolution of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) and the USSR Council of People’s Commissars, approved by the Politburo on February 3, 1938:

Considering, first, that a number of arrested conspirators (Rudzutak, Rozengolts, Antipov, Mezhlauk, Karakhan, Yagoda, etc.) had built for themselves grandiose dacha-palaces with 15–20 or more rooms, where they lived in luxury and squandered the people’s money, thus demonstrating their complete moral decay and degeneration, and considering, second, that the desire to have such dacha-palaces still exists and is even growing in some circles of Soviet officials, the USSR Council of People’s Commissars and the Central Committee of the VKP(b) decree:

1. To set the maximum size of dachas for senior Soviet officials at 7–8 medium-sized rooms for families and 4–5 rooms for single individuals.

2. To transfer dachas exceeding the 7–8 room limit to the disposal of the USSR Council of People’s Commissars for use as rest homes for senior officials¹⁶.

It is telling that, until the aforementioned officials were «exposed as conspirators», nobody from the top leadership seemed particularly concerned about their palaces. When the palaces were confiscated, it was not to return them to the people, but to serve as vacation homes for «senior officials» (we examined Joseph Stalin’s own dachas in detail here). Numerous letters, even before 1937, described the scale of corruption — for example, a letter from a citizen, Zaichenko, of Kazan, addressed to the People’s Commissariat of Trade:

Why are our deputies silent about how trade plans are fulfilled in stores, when nothing ever reaches the consumer… everything is stolen at the warehouses, and in the stores this theft only continues? Why does no one pay attention to the severe emaciation of preschool and school children who have no sweets, no fats? Why does no one mention that no one wants to work in the collective farms, people are fleeing to the cities, crops remained unharvested in 1939, and not all the land is being sown in 1940? Why do we have terrible hunger and exhaustion? Why is there so much hooliganism on the streets, banditry among teenagers? The police mean nothing to them. Why do they talk about achievements while hiding by all means what is really going on?¹⁷

As for whether such rampant corruption was limited to the Leningrad region — for example, a report by USSR Prosecutor Grigory Safonov to the country’s leadership indicated that the entire Soviet judicial system, from top to bottom, was riddled with corruption:

I report that recently the USSR Prosecutor’s Office has uncovered numerous cases of bribery, abuse, collusion with criminal elements, and the delivery of unlawful verdicts and decisions in judicial bodies in Moscow, Kiev, Krasnodar, and Ufa. The investigation revealed that these crimes were committed at various levels of the judicial system, namely in the people’s courts, the Moscow City Court, the Kiev Regional Court, the Krasnodar Regional Court, the Supreme Court of the RSFSR, and finally in the Supreme Court of the USSR…¹⁸

High-Ranking Corrupt Officials

Corruption in Stalin’s USSR was present at all levels, starting with the General Secretary himself, whose dachas we have already mentioned. Stalin’s People’s Commissar Genrikh Yagoda, for instance, spent 3,718,500 rubles on himself in just the first nine months of 1936¹⁹. The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR, Mir Jafar Bagirov, lived from 1933 to 1951 in the De Bur Mansion²⁰, and his personal security detail consisted of 41 people, whose maintenance cost the state about 1 million rubles annually²¹. The Chief Military Prosecutor Nikolai Afanasyev recalled Colonel-General Yefim Shchadenko:

By the end of his life, he had become completely deranged. His arrogance and vanity were compounded by some kind of pathological greed and miserliness. Shchadenko was left alone – his wife had died, and he had no children. At his own dacha, he sold vegetables and hoarded money. When he fell ill, he brought his own pillows, blankets, and mattress to the Kremlin hospital. When he died, money was found in the mattress – more than one hundred sixty thousand rubles. He died on that money…²²

In many cases, corruption was initiated from the very top — for instance, the leading researcher of Soviet nomenklatura, Mikhail Voslensky, recalls the infamous «Stalin envelopes» or «packages»:

Stalin introduced for his nomenklatura yet another completely illegal payment – the so-called «package». In addition to their salary, the cashier would bring to the office of a nomenklatura official a stack of money in an envelope, recorded in a special ledger²³.

As former regional committee secretary Alexander Lyashko recalls in his memoirs «The Burden of Memory», along with his salary of 1,800 rubles, he also received an envelope containing 4,000 rubles, tax-free: this was Stalin’s way of buying the loyalty of the leadership²⁴. Doctor of Historical Sciences Alexander Konovalov writes about Khrushchev’s times:

The Stalinist system of temporary cash allowances was preserved and even strengthened, acting as a catalyst for social stratification within the apparatus. (It was introduced after the 1947 currency reform and allowed a narrow circle of individuals to receive 2–3 additional salaries on top of their regular pay. The size of these allowances strictly depended on the hierarchical position of the employee: the higher the rank, the more salary equivalents they received.)²⁵

Was There a Fight Against Corruption?

According to Doctor of Historical Sciences Oleg Khlevnyuk, author of Stalin’s biography «The Life of a Leader», the Stalinist leadership did not put up serious resistance to corruption:

There was no harsh fight against corruption. There are many curious cases. One of the most striking is the so-called Azerbaijani case of 1948, when a commission from Moscow, which was investigating abuses following numerous complaints from the republics, arrived. The Ministry of State Control, which at the time was headed by Mekhlis (Colonel-General Lev Mekhlis – editor’s note), a man highly trusted by Stalin, also participated. They arrived in the republic and indeed uncovered a lot. High-ranking officials had acquired enormous mansions, started their own private farms, and sold their products at markets — in short, they found plenty. But it all ended with the inspectors being set up with women of a certain profession, everything photographed, and the information sent to Moscow. In principle, Stalin had already ordered the whole thing to be stopped, and the inspection was terminated²⁶.

Prosecutors who fought corruption could lose their posts instead of receiving any reward for their efforts. In the spring of 1945, in the Kirishi district of Leningrad Region, district prosecutor Ivanishchev conducted an inspection of the distribution of American humanitarian aid, which was intended for the most needy workers of the district forestry enterprise. The results showed that the most needy loggers turned out to be the director of the forestry enterprise, the party organizer, other administrative staff, and the chairman of the district executive committee, among whom more than 102 gift packages were distributed.

The prosecutor reported the findings to the district committee, which decided not to hold the guilty accountable but to limit the response to a party reprimand and the return of the gifts. Somewhat surprised by such «leniency», the prosecutor continued the investigation and discovered that some of the gifts had not reached the forestry enterprise at all but were misappropriated by Loginov, the deputy head of the district executive committee’s state supply department, who was responsible for their distribution. The district committee again limited itself to a reprimand.

When the prosecutor once again exposed Loginov for misappropriating gifts, the district committee secretary strictly forbade Ivanishchev from pursuing the case. The principled prosecutor then found out that this «benevolent attitude» toward the criminal was explained by the fact that part of the gifts had gone to the families of the district committee members. Ivanishchev appealed to the regional prosecutor’s office, which, through the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), succeeded in bringing Loginov to criminal responsibility. However, his party patrons went unpunished, while prosecutor Ivanishchev was soon removed from his post at the initiative of the district committee²⁷.

Did Ordinary People Try to Fight Corruption?

Soviet citizens wrote letters to party and government bodies, auditing and control institutions, and the media during the 1940s and 1950s. Afterwards, they often faced trouble as a result.

In May 1947, Y. Fyodorova, an employee of the Piskaryovka state farm, sent a statement to the State Control Commission regarding abuses by the farm administration. She accused the farm director, A. Komanov, the chief agronomist, and other responsible employees of keeping personal livestock in the collective farm’s cowshed, using materials meant for repairing farm facilities to build their own houses, stealing fodder and milk, concealing and appropriating part of the harvest, illegally receiving food ration cards, and more. The statement was forwarded for review to the prosecutor’s office, which confirmed the validity of the accusations and returned the documents to the State Control Commission for a comprehensive audit of the farm. However, instead of conducting the audit, the materials were passed from one supervisory authority to another until they ended up in the archives. None of the farm’s executives were punished. The only person who suffered was Fyodorova herself. With the help of his «friends» in the district executive committee, the farm director evicted her from her room (a decision by the people’s court on the illegality of such actions was simply ignored). Fyodorova, however, did not give up. In December 1947, when Komanov was nominated as a candidate for the Kalininsky District Council, she sent another statement to the district party committee about new abuses committed by the director. The result came quickly: the complainant was summoned to the district office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and warned that if she continued to slander honest communists, she would be arrested for anti-Soviet agitation²⁸.

In 1947, M. Makov, the manager of one of the households in Smolninsky District of Leningrad, filed a statement about housing speculation by officials of the district housing administration, after which he was dismissed. Makov did not give up and continued his efforts to seek justice. In response to his complaints, between 1948 and 1952, and with the help of the district prosecutor who protected the wrongdoers, 32 criminal cases were initiated against Makov (all closed as fabricated), and there were attempts to have him declared insane. In 1953, the main «characters» of his statements were arrested for major embezzlement, but despite this, the head of the Leningrad Housing Administration, Lomov, refused to reinstate Makov in his position²⁹.

What Happened to Executives Who Did Not Engage in Corruption?

The best answer to this question is the story of the appeal of Stolbikov, secretary of the primary party organization of the junction railway hospital. In 1948, a commission led by M. Lebedev, an employee of the Leningrad City Executive Committee, arrived at the hospital to inspect the work of its food department, and he immediately made it clear that the outcome of the inspection depended on the size of the gift he would receive. When the hospital administration refused to comply with the inspector’s demands, the inspection report concluded that there had been significant thefts and abuses in the hospital. The prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case against two of its employees. The party committee secretary, disagreeing with this verdict, appealed to the district party committee. The committee-appointed commission concluded that the accusations against the hospital staff were unfounded, and the criminal case was closed. However, when Stolbikov sent a report to the city party committee demanding that Lebedev be punished, he himself became the subject of a disciplinary investigation, accused of «attempting to discredit a representative of Soviet power»³⁰. Thus, the regional nomenklatura itself encouraged corruption.

Conclusion

Under Joseph Stalin, corruption in the USSR began to thrive from the very first years of his dictatorship. As early as the spring of 1932, People’s Commissar for Supply Anastas Mikoyan admitted: «Everyone steals, including the communists. It is easier for a communist to steal than for anyone else. He is shielded by his party card and less likely to be suspected»³¹. Corruption manifested itself in a wide variety of forms, at all levels, and was pervasive throughout virtually the entire period of Joseph Stalin’s rule.

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