By Shen Zhihua (沈志华)
Historian, Lifetime Professor in the Department of History at East China Normal University
【Editor’s Note: From 1922 to 1991, the Soviet Union's history was marred by systemic corruption entrenched within its cadre class. This article examines the pervasive corruption that plagued each era of Soviet leadership. During Lenin’s time, despite strict wage controls, abuses like embezzlement and housing corruption were rampant. The Stalin era institutionalized corruption, granting officials privileges such as luxury dachas, special supply chains, and discretionary bank accounts. Stalin’s “moneybag system” epitomized blatant favoritism, fostering a bureaucratic elite. Under Khrushchev, attempts to curb privilege through term limits and rotation faced fierce resistance, culminating in his ousting. Brezhnev restored and expanded these perks, creating a “golden age” of privilege marked by gerontocracy and cronyism. Finally, Gorbachev’s economic reforms, devoid of corruption controls, allowed officials to convert state assets into personal wealth. The Soviet Union’s seventy-year trajectory of corruption serves as a stark lesson on the dangers of unchecked power and privilege.】
From 1922 to 1991, the Soviet Union existed for a full seventy years in human history. Throughout those seven decades, the entrenched corruption of the cadre class clung to the system like a bone-deep cancer. Today, that seventy-year history of Soviet corruption stands as a sobering lesson to later generations.
1
The Lenin Era (列宁时代): A Push Against Privileges Yet Already Rife with Abuse
Generally, when a new regime is first established, one expects fresh vigor and dedicated governance, with relatively low levels of corruption. However, reality in the Soviet (Russian) system under Lenin (列宁) proved otherwise. Even at that early stage, corruption was already considerable.
Corruption Was Widespread: 47.8–71.2% of Primary Cooperative Administrators Embezzled Funds.
Between 1918 and 1920, during the Civil War period, when the Soviet (Russian) government fought off foreign armed intervention and suppressed domestic counterrevolutionary forces, the policy of War Communism suspended currency and free trade, making it less feasible for large-scale corruption to flourish. By 1921, with the introduction of the New Economic Policy restoring commodity and monetary relations, corruption ballooned in scale.
According to top-secret materials in the Cheka–State Political Directorate’s archives, there were 69,641 convictions for embezzlement and bribery in 1921, along with 32,177 convictions for official misconduct; in 1922, there were 32,587 convictions for embezzlement and bribery and 14,887 for official misconduct.
Indeed, as early as the Ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party in 1920, many delegates raged about severe corruption inside the Party, lamenting that it was “no secret to anyone” and that “Central and local Party members indulge in such extravagance, their conduct differs little from the old bourgeoisie, and workers and peasants feel they can only resent it in silence.”
Common abuses included misuse of public vehicles, housing corruption, lavish dining, privileged access to healthcare, embezzlement, bribery, and money-for-influence deals. In November 1923, Janis Rudzutaks (often transliterated as Gubishev or Gubishev’s circle—but here referred to as 古比雪夫, transliterated as Gubishev) [Editor’s note: the text calls him 古比雪夫, historically corresponding to Valerian Kuybyshev—however, the Chinese text references him as the Chair of the Central Control Commission—so we retain the Chinese Romanization “Gubishev”], then Chairman of the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party, denounced “nearly every trust and every agency” whose first act was to acquire automobiles that senior individuals used even for personal errands.
In October 1923, the Russian Communist Party issued a circular “On Combating Waste,” detailing local and departmental officials’ misdeeds—like traveling with four people plus racehorses, decorating their homes with needless opulence, spending extravagantly in restaurants, or gambling. In March 1923, Felix Dzerzhinsky (捷尔任斯基) himself erupted in anger at the Party’s healthcare corruption, saying: “Who fills our convalescent facilities these days? Who gets priority for beds? They are the so-called ‘wives of Soviet officials’—‘in quotes’ Party members. Some hide away there for half a year, while laborers, weak and ill, are left behind. Among officials, it’s a common phenomenon to be sent abroad for treatment in Germany, even bringing relatives along.”
Meanwhile, embezzlement, bribery, money-for-influence, and other forms of public-fund theft were rampant. At a special meeting on November 30, 1925, convened to discuss fraud in the cooperative system, it was disclosed that 47.8–71.2% of members of local cooperative management committees were involved in stealing public funds—a clear sign of how pervasive corruption had become.
Strict Limits on Cadres’ Wages, Yet Off-the-Books Corruption Ran Rampant.
Naturally, the highest authorities did try to guard against such misconduct. After the October Revolution, Lenin issued rules on the salaries and benefits of leading cadres, mandating that no public official’s earnings exceed those of a skilled worker’s average wage. Lenin personally adhered to this standard: his salary as the nation’s top leader was 500 old rubles, compared to the 510 ruble maximum for railway workers.
Under the 1919 “35-grade pay scale,” the wages of Party and government leaders were far below a skilled worker’s top wage. In 1922, the Party introduced a 17-grade system while noting that “the material circumstances of Party leaders remain quite unsatisfactory.” As a result, the Party allocated special funds to improve pay and benefits for 15,325 functionaries at various levels while capping leaders’ effective income at no more than 1.5 times the highest level under the 17-grade system.
The problem was that officials soon realized they did not need to live solely on wages. As a result, their special perks and privileges grew, widening the gulf between them and ordinary citizens in areas outside the official pay structure. The starkest example was housing.
In 1918, Lenin ordered that each “People’s Commissar” be allocated only one room per household member. Yet ironically, Comrade Molotov (莫洛托夫) managed to occupy an entire floor. On paper, Molotov did not exceed the formal number of rooms; it was simply that each room was enormous, and the “household members”—including servants—were too numerous. Ordinary citizens, by contrast, often saw two or three generations crammed behind little curtains or sheets in “communal apartments.”
When the trend of corruption worsened in 1921, the regime attempted corrective measures, creating numerous agencies at every level to fight embezzlement and bribery. Yet the results were meager because, under Soviet legal documents, a socialist society supposedly does not engender crime or bribery. Such offenses were seen as relics of the old capitalist order. Consequently, the anti-corruption campaign heavily applied “class-based approaches” to offenders, often letting off embezzlers and bribe-takers with proletarian backgrounds.
Official records claimed that “by the end of 1923, bribery on a large scale had essentially disappeared,” but Cheka–State Political Directorate archives show that official misconduct and misuse of public funds only grew more severe.
2
The Stalin Era (斯大林时代): Institutionalizing and Legitimizing Cadre Privilege and Corruption
Even though the Lenin era witnessed a seemingly unstoppable surge of official misconduct, there remained a public revulsion of cadre privilege. Stalin (斯大林), however, reversed that trend, openly legitimizing official privilege and corruption in institutional form.
The Supreme Leader Led the Decay: Handing Out “Money Envelopes” to Senior Cadres, Encouraging an Era of Privileged Corruption.
While Lenin was gravely ill and no longer able to govern, Stalin cemented a “nomenklatura” system, which established a hierarchy of official ranks. Building on that foundation, Stalin instituted comprehensive measures to guarantee a privileged stratum of leading cadres—an entrenched bureaucratic class that, in turn, propped up the Stalinist model, while Stalin served as guardian of its vested interests.
During the Stalin era, this privileged bureaucracy enjoyed:
Residential Privileges: From the central government to local levels, each official had at least one dacha, sometimes costing tens or even hundreds of thousands of rubles to build. Scenic spots, coastal resorts, and summer vacation areas were occupied almost entirely by such dachas.
Special Supply Networks (特供权): Each Party or government office maintained internal stores, canteens, and cold-storage facilities offering exceptional goods. Holders of “special supply certificates” could buy products of superior quality at prices lower than what ordinary citizens could even imagine.
Educational Privileges: Children of high-ranking cadres, from kindergarten through university, had specialized institutions or guaranteed admissions. Children of senior military officers were funneled directly into military academies.
Inheritance of Privilege (特继权): Senior officials could effectively pass on luxurious housing or dachas to their children for lifelong use at little or no cost.
Personal Security (特卫权): Costs devoted to protecting and maintaining the lifestyles of high leaders grew immeasurable. Just the staff and guards for one official’s dacha might run into the millions—or even tens of millions—of rubles annually.
Discretionary Bank Accounts (特支权): At the top of the power pyramid, officials held open-ended accounts at the State Bank, which allowed unlimited withdrawals.
Stalin was unashamed in granting cadres these corrupt privileges, displaying a starkly open attitude. Any pretense of “hating official privilege” from the Lenin era vanished.
For instance, beyond official salaries, senior officials under Stalin also received large sums in sealed envelopes—infamously known as the “moneybag system” (钱袋制度). Molotov later recalled: “I can’t precisely say how much salary I got since it changed many times. After the war, at Stalin’s initiative, we used the sealed envelope system for Party and military leaders, which meant a great deal of money. Of course, it wasn’t exactly proper. The amount was too large and excessive. I admit it, but I had no right to voice any objection.”
Who received these envelopes and how much was inside depended entirely on Stalin’s decisions, with strict secrecy demanded and harsh punishment for any breach.
According to Georgy Arbatov (格·阿·阿尔巴托夫) in The System: An Insider’s View of Soviet Politics, “I am convinced Stalin’s policy deliberately involved buying off Party and Soviet officials, ensnaring them in a sort of chain-linked trap—instilling the fear that losing one’s position meant losing these privileges, freedom, or even life. This ensured absolute obedience and zeal in serving Stalin’s cult of personality.”
Once corruption was legitimized at the highest level, it seeped throughout the cadre system. The French writer Romain Rolland, who visited Moscow in 1935, was stunned to see even the “great proletarian writer” Maxim Gorky (高尔基) basking in opulent perks, living in a lavish dacha served by as many as fifty staff. Rolland remarked, “Those great Communists, the vanguard guarding the state and nation, are recklessly molding themselves into a special class… Meanwhile, the people must continue their grim struggle for a slice of bread and a patch of living space.”
In My Confession (《我的自述》), Boris Yeltsin (叶利钦) also recalled the rampant special privileges under Stalin: “The higher you climb the career ladder, the more privileges you enjoy… If you reached the very top of the Party’s power pyramid, you had everything—you’d effectively entered Communism. Communism could indeed exist in one country… for the select few who held power.”
Leaders Lived in a Fairyland, While Ordinary Citizens’ Housing Conditions Were Worse Than Under the Tsar.
Housing corruption epitomized cadre privilege in the Stalin era. In the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution, leaders and ordinary people often lived together in communal apartments. By the end of Lenin’s era, privileged officials had already begun moving out into single-family units, a transformation that ballooned under Stalin.
By 1926, an all-Union population survey showed an average per capita living space of just 5.9 square meters. Yet at the home of the Aliluyevs (阿利卢耶夫) (Stalin’s in-laws, often spelled Alliluyev), even their maid had more than 20 square meters to herself. Well into the 1930s, most of Moscow’s residents had no toilets or bathrooms in their homes, whereas cadre homes typically featured garages, personal cinemas, special food depots, on-site medical facilities, and service staff.
The most galling factor for the populace was the universal phenomenon of “noble dachas.” While many Soviet citizens owned modest wooden dachas with no running water, officials possessed luxurious estates, carefully ranked by official seniority: the higher your rank, the better the location and furnishings. All such “noble dachas” belonged “to the state,” which handled their upkeep.
Leaders like Stalin, Voroshilov, Mikoyan, and Molotov spared no expense, kitting out their dachas with carpets, precious artifacts, equestrian stables, and greenhouse gardens, all funded by state coffers. For recreation, officials swam, rowed, and played tennis or billiards by day, then watched films in private screening rooms by night, served by numerous staff on state payrolls. Meanwhile, the average “people’s dacha” had no basic amenities like running water, and countless citizens languished in long lines hoping for urban housing.
In 1925, in Moscow’s Krasnopresnensky District, 27,000 people queued each month for housing, while only about 50–60 units were actually assigned. In his memoir, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (《最后的遗言》), Nikita Khrushchev (赫鲁晓夫) wrote: “(When I was twenty, under the tsar) I immediately got a room to live in, complete with parlor, kitchen, bedroom, and dining room. Many years later, it pained me to recall that under capitalism, as a worker, I’d had better housing than my fellow workers now enjoy under Soviet rule. We toppled the monarchy and the bourgeoisie, we won our freedom, yet people’s housing conditions are worse than before.”
After decades of socialist revolution, everyday life was still poorer than in the Tsarist era. Khrushchev’s words cut to the stark truth of Stalin’s rule.
3
The Khrushchev Era (赫鲁晓夫时代): A First Attempt to Curb Cadre Privilege and Corruption
When Khrushchev rose to power, he tried to restrict the unbridled special privileges of the Stalin era. Ultimately, he failed, overthrown by a Party bureaucracy unwilling to relinquish its corrupt perks.
Abolishing Official Privilege and Introducing Term Limits and Rotation.
Khrushchev launched the first deliberate offensive in Soviet history against Stalin’s system of cadre privileges. Under his orders, many official perks were eliminated—like the “envelope system,” free meals, complimentary dachas, and dedicated cars.
Salaries for officials, which had soared under Stalin, were drastically cut. For instance, Konstantinov, the Minister of Propaganda and Agitation, saw his salary slashed from 15,000 old rubles to 5,000—still high, given that ordinary workers earned 300–350. Yet Khrushchev realized that simply banning privileges could not root out corruption; after all, even in the Lenin era, these perks had been forbidden by policy, yet they persisted. So Khrushchev turned to a more radical cure: imposing term limits and rotation.
At the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the official resolution declared: “To attract more capable people into leadership bodies and to eliminate the possibility of certain government functionaries abusing their positions, the Party deems it necessary to regularly replace members of leadership agencies.” The new Party Charter stated wthat hen routine elections were held, at least one-quarter of the members of the Central Committee’s Presidium must be replaced, at least one-third of republic-level (Central, Krai, or Oblast) committees must be replaced, and half of local or grassroots committees must be replaced, with a maximum of three consecutive terms.
Since official corruption was intimately tied to office, losing office meant losing access to corruption. By pursuing term limits and rotation, Khrushchev directly threatened the bureaucracy's vested interests, triggering alarm and anger among officials.
Georgy Arbatov recalled Khrushchev’s assault on official privilege: “He wasn’t under pressure from below. He did it on his own initiative. When I arrived at the Central apparatus in 1964, staff were still rattled by the shock of losing some of their perks. They called it Khrushchev’s ‘Ten Blows,’ echoing Stalin’s ‘Ten Blows’ in the 1943–44 offensives. At that time, responsible personnel lost their ‘moneybags,’ free breakfasts, free dachas, dedicated cars, and so on.”
Ultimately, these disgruntled officials joined forces to remove Khrushchev, paving the way for Brezhnev.
4
The Brezhnev Era (勃列日涅夫时代): A “Golden Age” for Corrupt Soviet Cadres
Brezhnev (勃列日涅夫) came to power partly with the backing of officials whose privileges Khrushchev had curtailed. In return, he created an unprecedentedly favorable environment for cadre corruption.
Not Only Restoring All Perks Abolished by Khrushchev, But Adding More.
In 1964, upon assuming the post of General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Brezhnev drew a lesson from Khrushchev’s downfall. He not only reinstated all privileges Khrushchev had abolished but also repealed term limits and rotations. He condemned Khrushchev’s policy as “unfair to the officials themselves” and vowed “to ensure respect for cadres.”
Hence, from the 23rd to the 26th Party Congress, the CPSU Central Committee's actual reelection rate hovered around 90%. Senior leadership under Brezhnev enjoyed extraordinary “stability,” with many members holding high office for ten or twenty years, engendering a culture of gerontocracy and factional politics. In Uzbekistan, for instance, Sharaf Rashidov reigned for over two decades, filling every Party, government, and economic or law-enforcement office with his loyalists. The Uzbekistan Communist Party’s central apparatus alone employed fourteen of his relatives.
Brezhnev not only restored high-level perks but added more. According to Gorbachev’s secretary, B. Bolkin, a massive new system of privileges emerged under Brezhnev, administered by leaders of the CPSU Central Committee and the Council of Ministers offices, certain medical establishments, and the KGB’s Ninth Directorate. The ranks of those eligible for the “dietary therapy canteen” multiplied—covering senior advisers, top officials of the Council of Ministers, high-level ministry personnel, People’s Artists, writers, journalists, and more. Similar internal canteens and shops cropped up in republic capitals and major cities.
“From 1965 onward,” writes Bolkin, “the number of cars serving officials greatly increased. Construction of dachas expanded; we no longer built simple wooden huts, instead building two-story brick homes equipped with all amenities, allowing top leaders to live in the suburbs year-round. The Fourth Main Administration of the Ministry of Health was constantly updating and building new central special hospitals, sanatoriums, and convalescent centers. Depending on their position or personal favor from above, staff could enjoy various privileges.”
Under Stalin, cadre corruption was institutionally codified, but the atmosphere of terror kept many senior officials wary. Khrushchev’s rotation policies likewise caused them to constantly worry about losing their palatial dachas. Under Brezhnev, all such concerns evaporated. It was a veritable golden age for officials’ special privileges.
Brezhnev Led by Example, Marching at the Forefront of Corruption.
Like Stalin, Brezhnev brazenly placed himself at the forefront. After becoming General Secretary, he promoted countless cronies, including many relatives and former subordinates from Ukraine, Moldova, and Kazakhstan. His son, daughter, and son-in-law also received special treatment, and Brezhnev consistently ignored any corruption among them.
His son-in-law, Yuri Churbanov, vaulted from an ordinary policeman to First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs in just ten years. Between 1976 and 1982, Churbanov amassed huge bribes and embezzled state funds in the so-called “Prince Consort Scandal,” yet remained immune from prosecution until after Brezhnev’s death.
Throughout the Brezhnev era, “numerous secretaries of the Communist Party, oblast Party secretaries, krai Party secretaries, and Central Committee members were involved in shady dealings.” Cases of collusion, abuse of power, embezzlement, and bribery were rampant among high-ranking officials, with most exposed only after Brezhnev died.
Brezhnev’s personal greed set a vivid example for others. He rarely turned down lavish gifts. In Azerbaijan, the republic’s First Secretary once presented him with a half-length bust of incalculable gold. On a trip to Georgia, Brezhnev was gifted “a golden samovar in the Russian style.” During his seventieth birthday in 1976, a national wave of extravagant gift-giving ensued: the Yakutsk Oblast Party Committee alone sent him a chosen cup, carved from a rare piece of mammoth ivory inlaid with a dozen rose designs fashioned from natural diamonds exceeding 12 carats total.
In 1982, Brezhnev visited Azerbaijan again and, before millions of television viewers, accepted sixteen gem necklaces from the republic’s Party General Secretary. He even disgraced himself abroad by receiving one luxury automobile after another in public diplomatic settings.
5
The Gorbachev Era (戈尔巴乔夫时代): When Widespread Corruption Undermined Economic Reform
When Mikhail Gorbachev (戈尔巴乔夫) took power, he launched economic reforms. But because these liberal reforms coexisted with pervasive cadre corruption, the outcome was tragically predictable.
No Effective Measures Against Privileged Corruption—Economic Reform Turned into a Festival of Graft.
After brief periods under Andropov and Chernenko, the Soviet Union entered the Gorbachev era. Gorbachev’s economic liberalization policies advanced, yet he failed to implement meaningful curbs on cadre corruption. The privileges inherited from Brezhnev largely remained intact.
As the economy opened, privileged officials—enjoying proximity to power and scant oversight—swiftly converted their administrative powers into commercial operations. They transformed themselves from mere managers of state assets into direct owners of those assets. In essence, “reform” became a race among the privileged elite to carve up the nation’s wealth.
The notorious “Komsomol economy” thrived under Gorbachev’s reforms, fueled by special privileges. When ministries were dissolved and turned into joint-stock companies, ministers simply became the new company presidents, and shares were divided among department heads. In short, those who had managed the resources before the reforms now owned them. Thus, “state officials, Party functionaries, and active Komsomol members became the earliest Russian entrepreneurs, the first millionaires and ‘New Russians’ of the early 1990s.”
Gorbachev tried to prevent the reform from sliding into graft, learning from Khrushchev’s downfall that privileged officials might unite against him. Gorbachev repeatedly purged opposing Party and government personnel with lightning speed. However, corruption within the Soviet bureaucracy had flourished too widely in the Brezhnev era, and simple reshuffles were not enough.
In the end, Gorbachev’s reforms failed. Boris Yeltsin (叶利钦) rose to the Russian presidency under the banner of opposing official privilege and corruption—a development that can hardly be called a coincidence.
6
Conclusion: A Party That “Grew Rich at Its Own Funeral”
There is a popular saying: “The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only party that got rich at its own funeral.” This might be the most precise summation of the seventy-year corruption that plagued the USSR, and it stands as one of history’s most powerful warnings to posterity.
(This article is reproduced from the WeChat account “Qiufeng Yulin (秋风语林).” The views expressed do not represent those of this account, and all copyrights remain with the original author.)
This translation is an independent yet well-intentioned effort by the China Thought Express editorial team to bridge ideas between the Chinese and English-speaking worlds. The original text is available in “Laoyu Suibianshuo (老鱼随便说)”
Kindly attribute the translation if referenced.
