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	CRIME AND CORRUPTION THE KEY TO RUSSIA'S FUTURE
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        By Joseph de Courcy

	The Russian approach to the UN conference on crime,
	held in Naples last week, was extremely defensive.
	The Russian interior minister, Viktor Yerin, for
	example, accused those in the West who "exaggerate"
	the threat of Russian organized crime of using "the
	language of Cold-War times".  However, it is not
	Western reactions to Russia's crime wave that should
	be worrying Yerin, but the use that is being made of
	this issue by extremist Russian demagogues such as
	Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

		Just before the Naples summit, the Russian
	parliament debated a report on crime delivered by Viktor
	Yerin, and the debate was opened by Zhirinovsky.  His
	facts are no doubt as unreliable, and his language as
	colourful, as ever, but his speech to the State Duma gives
	a perfect example of how Russia's extreme nationalist
	politicians are using the crime wave to further their own
	cause.

		Zhirinovsky told the State Duma that "Moscow has
	turned into the capital of the criminal world.  In the city
	there are 100,000 armed bandits, from commercial
	structure guards to men from Transcaucasia, who set up
	headquarters here to form armed units."

		"All this", he said, "is taking place with the
	connivance of the Ministry of the Interior...[whose
	officers are] drunk every morning after receiving
	enormous bribes on the day before."

		Zhirinovsky was far from alone in the debate in
	presenting an apocalyptic vision of where uncontrolled
	crime is leading the Russian state.  Sergey Boskholov,
	for instance, claimed in the debate that between 5% and
	7% of Russia's national income is controlled by organized
	crime and that about 40,000 economic entities are under
	its control.

		Yekaterina Lakhova, leader of the Women of Russia
	faction, warned the Duma that Russia is on the verge of
	a criminal-world dictatorship.

	CORRUPTION AND CRIME

	Much of the blame for the crime wave is being laid on
	corrupt politicians, administrators, and military men; and
	the means by which they have become corrupted is seen
	to be the rapid and uncontrolled economic reforms.
	Former chief Soviet corruption-buster Yuri Boldyrev, for
	example, says that it was the radical reformers under the
	pro-Western economic supremo Yegor Gaidar who
	created the climate for vice and corruption.

		According to Boldyrev's thesis, Gaidar's insistence
	on instant capitalism, in the first post-Soviet days of 1992,
	meant that the government had to condone massive theft
	from the state so that the capital to fuel a capitalist society
	could be amassed in private hands.

		One of the men Boldyrev criticizes most is Anatoly
	Chubais, ex-privatization minister who was appointed
	first deputy prime minister this month.  Boldyrev says
	that Chubais' privatization agency, Groskomimushestvo,
	has been the fountainhead of much corruption with its
	non-accountable issuing of privatization vouchers.

		It is now far more likely that a Russian radical
	nationalist will rise to power on an anti-crime, anti-
	corruption, ticket than on any overt programme for the
	restoration of the Russian empire.  The people would
	support the former, but not necessarily the latter.  The
	trick will be to persuade the armed forces that they have
	more to gain from being the guardians of a strong
	nationalist Russia than by continuing their slide into
	corruption.  Close observers of the Russian armed forces
	say they would respond to the right person.  Although
	that person is unlikely to be Vladimir Zhirinovsky, he is
	pointing a clear way forward.  Crime and corruption, not
	the restoration of the empire, will be the issue on which
	a new Russian strongman will rise to power.

[end]

Source: Intelligence Digest
	25 November 1994
	Intelligence International Ltd.
	The Stoneyhill Centre
	Brimpsfield, Gloucester, GL4 8LF, UK