One of the Circuses the Kremlin Offers Russians – Selective Prosecution of the Corrupt – Losing Its Impact

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 7 – Until recently, Moscow has successfully used selective arrests and prosecutions of high-level officials and businessmen for corruption to suggest the regime is committed to fighting corruption and to distract the attention of Russians from the problems of their daily lives.

            But a new Levada Center poll suggests that this stratagem is no longer as effective as it once was with only a third of Russians saying they are pleased about such arrests, 14 percent angry, but 40 percent saying that they do not feel anything much at all about them (vedomosti.ru/politics/articles/2019/05/06/800852-tret-rossiyan-udovletvorenie and mk.ru/social/2019/05/07/rossiyan-perestali-radovat-aresty-chinovnikov.html).

            The Levada Center found that only one in four in fact view these arrests as an indication that the government is committed to fighting corruption. Instead, most say that such judicial actions are part of a struggle for power and wealth or even that they now view them as an effort by the regime to distract people from their real problems.

            The Center’s Lev Gudkov says that the only people who are responding as the Kremlin would like them to in large numbers are the poorly educated and the elderly. They still view such arrests with unvarnished satisfaction and in the belief that these acts show the regime is on their side.

            A major reason for this shift, the Levada Center says, is that only three percent of Russians believe that senior government officials fully report their incomes. Instead, Russians overwhelmingly believe that those officials are hiding some or even a great deal of the money they get (novayagazeta.ru/news/2019/05/07/151467-opros-pokazal-nedoverie-88-rossiyan-k-otchetam-o-dohodah-chinovnikov-peskov-ob-yasnil-eto-neznaniem-grazhdan-sistemy-proverki).

            In fact, 40 percent say that the income these officials do report constitutes only “a small part” of their real income; and 37 percent now say that reported incomes form “a piddling amount” of the total. That view suggests that the arrests of some senior officials for corruption will only lead more Russians to focus on the corruption of all or most of them.