Deanna Wotursky unit 9

Corruption is a global problem, and continues to take on all types of forms on the Individual, System and State levels. Russia just happens to be a leading player in all types of corruption but specifically household and government corruption. According to the article, “Household corruption pervades all public services in Russia; bribes for education total $5.5 billion a year.” Corruption isn’t just a problem for Russia in the political sector but with the people in general to get not only what they deserve from state run programs but what they want. From my own studies of Russia, I feel corruption is at the root of the Russian government and has been beyond the Soviet Era. The article presents the initiatives and strategies that president Medvedev is pursuing on an Individual level. These are realistic goals which are aimed at changing laws on the state level, but he also seems to reject strategies to fight higher levels of corruption in the system. One of the biggest issues facing modern Russia today is corruption. The recent protests in Russia are fueled by the masses that feel the elections are unjust and filled with such corruption. One of the leaders of these protests is a Russian blogger, Alexei Navalny, who writes on corruption in the Kremlin, power ministries, secret police, and the system in general and invites the people of Russia to post anonymously on his site as well. This type of out lash against the Putin regime has put Navalny under arrest many times. The Putin regime is known for its “Managed democracy” meanwhile the young, intelligent, urban crowd in Moscow and St. Petersburg are calling for a more free democracy. These types of protests display a weakened Nation-State. For Example, the party “Just Russia” walked out on Putin’s speech to the Duma earlier in April to show they wouldn’t stand for his “authoritarian” antics. Before the final elections in early March, Putin attempted to legitimize voting by putting surveillance videos in all of the voting booths. He did this because he was accused of ballot stuffing and voting fraud which did ring true in the northern caucuses, especially Chechnya, where voting turnout somehow reached an impossible 107%. The article goes on to discuss Russia’s rankings of corruption on a world scale and the author states that it ranks “143rd in Transparency International’s 2011 Corruption Index.” This ranking isn’t a very good one for a country that is trended to be a leading empire, especially economically. Medvedev found the “Anticorruption Council and instituting a law requiring government officials and their family members to disclose their holdings.” This is ironic because rejects laws that aim this to the highest authority figures. As Rourke discusses, corruption occurs in lower developed countries more often than economically developed countries, but Russia as and EDC is ranked among LDC’s on the world scale and rather than helping the impoverished, their making the members and the rich wealthier. The household corruption stems from government programs that aren’t satisfying the people’s needs, like the educations sector. People are bribing under paid teachers, schools, and etc. to get students into secondary schools. In all, corruption in Russia has been addressed by Medvedev with the starting of laws and a council. Under the Putin regime, it seems as if there is little hope for an effective government without corruption and fraud as a root in Russia’s foundation. In Russia “corruption pervades all of the public service sectors” and Medvedev is developing even more programs to ease a transition from this pervasive corruption to a more legitimate foundation.