Russia’s Migrant Worker System Inherently Corrupt, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 1 – Speakers at a Moscow roundtable this week on “Corruption in the Sphere of Migration” were unanimous in suggesting that the Russian legal system makes the process of migration and the inclusion of migrant workers in the Russian economy inherently corrupt, inviting the very abuses the authorities and the indigenous population often complain of.

            Batyrzhon Shermatov, founding editor of the Migrant portal, said that in his view corruption involving migrant workers was connected with three main factors: a lack of clarity and mutually exclusive rules in the laws, the setting of conditions that are almost impossible to fulfill, and overly harsh sanctions for violations (fergananews.com/articles/9778).

                Each of these factors, he continued, virtually invite both migrants and workers to engage in corrupt actions because the officials with whom each group has to deal are quite prepared to exploit the law to enrich themselves. Despite repeated complaints, the authorities seem quite prepared to allow the system to continue as it is.

            Valentina Chupik, who works as a pro bono defender of migrants, said that migrants are an easy target for police and other lower level officials who know that they can demand bribes from them because the migrants often do not know their rights or are unwilling or unable to defend themselves against such oppression.

            She said that more than 17,000 migrants nonetheless do turn to her legal group each year, an indication that the migrants are beginning to be more aware of their rights and their ability to defend themselves against the authorities. But that number is only slightly less than one for every 1000 migrants who are in Russia.

            Because most migrants don’t know their rights and are viewed with suspicion by many Russians, they are subject to harassment and extortion by a variety of officials. The police are the worst, feeling free in all too many cases to demand payments without any basis, but the multi-function migration centers and other government agencies are also involved in that.

            Chupik said that the main problem in this area is that the police give to themselves the right to check the documents of migrants without sufficient cause and in violation of the law and then demand payment from the migrants lest they bring charges against them.

            These corrupt police “are today so certain that they won’t be punished” for such actions that “they in practice don’t even both to conceal what they are doing.” 

As Under Stalin, Loyalty under Putin is No Longer a Guarantee of Security, Svetova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 1 – Stalin infamously observed at the start of the purges that the greatest wreckers were those who worked hardest and appeared most loyal because then they could be promoted and be in a position to wreck far greater havoc. In short, displays of loyalty were not enough to protect anyone from repression under the Soviet dictator.

            With the sentencing of former Kirov governor Nikita Belykh to eight years in jail for corruption, Moscow commentator Zoya Svetova says, Vladimir Putin and the siloviki around him have adopted the same principle even if they have not yet deigned to proclaim it openly (mbk.media/suzhet/vse-gubernatory-po-nitochke-xodyat/).

            Belykh, Svetova continues, refused to admit his guilt and called the charges against him “a banal provocation” by the siloviki. He is the first of several governors now facing such charges. And both his behavior and that of his opponents says a great deal about the evolution of the Russian political system under Putin.

            Throughout the trial, she says, Belykh continued to declare his loyalty to the Kremlin, did not make any political declarations, and even refused to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights lest he fall into the trap of becoming an opponent of Russia. But “loyalty isn’t saving” him, Svetova says; and it is unlikely to save the others now facing charges.

            She notes that “political analysts and experts are certain that the criminal persecution of the governors in the course of the third Putin term above all are connected with the growth of influence of the FSB, a trend Kirill Rogov and Nikita Petrov make in The Political Development of Russia, 2014-2016 (in Russian at liberal.ru/upload/files/Prakticheskoe_razivitie_Rossii.pdf).

                Rogov and Petrov point out that there has been a major change in the role of the FSB in such investigations from that of the KGB in the late Soviet period.  In the earlier period, the KGB couldn’t undertake such investigations on its own. Only CPSU could approve them. Now the FSB is moving on its own or with the approval of only the very top of the power vertical. 

            Although Svetova doesn’t say so, that returns this aspect of the Russian political system not to what it was under Khrushchev or Brezhnev but rather to what it was under Stalin in the 1930s and 1940s. 

            Obviously, there are some regional leaders who are beyond the reach of the siloviki such as Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechnya but only because he is supported by Putin. Those who do not have that unqualified support have now been put on notice that the siloviki and above all the FSB can come after them almost at will.

            And the FSB can count on convictions. Indeed, Svetova says, “the severe sentence” given to Below shows that “his friends and colleagues from the so-called liberal wing of the authorities could not defend him” against such an investigation and against such a sentence. Unlike the FSB, they couldn’t lobby at the highest levels.

Russian Society Moving to the Left Rather than to the Right, Kirillova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 1 – Many people assume that the neo-traditionalist course of the Putin Administration is moving Russian society to the right opening the way to a right-wing dictatorship, but in fact, Kseniya Kirillova notes, there are many indications that Russian society is moving to the left on key issues of social justice.

            That shift, revealed in polls and popular reactions to problems with healthcare, income differentiation and corruption, she says, has not attracted as much attention as moves to the right because most Russians still place their hopes for resolution in a paternalist state rather than on their own (planeta.media/articles/11695-kseniya-kirillova-kreml-medlenno-ubivaet-svoj-narod/).

            As long as such attitudes about the state persist, protests about these issues are likely to remain small, the US-based Russian analyst says; but these attitudes nonetheless pose a challenge to Putin in his next term because society expects him to address their concerns and is increasingly angry that he has done little more than make promises.

            Over time, that divide between promises and reality could alter the attitude of the population toward the state or at least its current rulers and at the very least lead to more vocal calls for change. To the extent that the Kremlin responds to these at least rhetorically, that day will come sooner rather than later.

            And thus the assumption many make that Putin can buy off the population with wars and circuses but not worry about providing them with bread, the usual second part of that equation, is likely to prove increasingly problematic, leaving the Kremlin leader with less enthusiastic support and more criticism and possibly even the emergence of a challenge from the left.

            In support of her argument, Kirillova cites the recent observation of Leonty Byzov, a senior scholar at the Moscow Institute of Sociology that “today’s demands for change ‘bear primarily a left-statist character (mk.ru/politics/2018/01/25/novyy-srok-putina-budet-ochen-tyazhelym-dlya-nego-i-strany.html).

            This demand, he says, “must not be called simply leftist because that term presupposes a certain civic activity – the establishment of trade unions, the struggle for one’s rights and so one. Here no such desires are being followed. People are not ready to do anything for themselves: they only appeal to the powers.”

            “This is a demand for a paternalist state, for a state which would begin to be concerned about everyone. But the powers that be are not in a position to satisfy this demand. The dynamic is obvious: the left-statist component of the Putin majority is actively displaying the right, which is connected with national identity, ‘the Russian spring,’ and similar things.”

            In first place now, Byzov says, is “the dissatisfaction of people with the extreme social injustice” they see around them. That attitude may not yet lead to protests, but it is one that the powers in the Kremlin cannot ignore even if they are very unsure of how to deal with it effectively.

            Kirillova points to how the authorities in recent months have made the situation worse by not addressing environmental concerns like radiation leaks, optimizing health care to the point that ever more Russians are suffering and dying, and failing to take steps to reduce the yawning inequality between rich and poor.

            Because of the election campaign, Putin and some others are saying more about these issues than they did earlier; but the government isn’t yet acting in a way to effectively address them. Indeed, it seems almost tone deaf to a set of attitudes among ever more Russians that are completely at odds with its own.