The KGB campaign against corruption in Moscow

"Sheds light on an important and hitherto largely overlooked phenomenon: the crackdown on corruption in Moscow's trade bureaucracy and how that might have fed directly into the political developments that led to the collapse of the USSR."--Peter Rutland, Wesleyan University.

"Makes an important and compelling case that the Soviet system, while principally different from those of Western societies, created its own formal and informal structure of incentives for rational decision making."--Andrei Tsygankov, San Francisco State University.

The 1980s brought a whirlwind of change to Communist Party politics and the Soviet government. Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost opened the door to democratic reform, unleashing mounting unrest over the failed economy and calls for independence that ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Often overlooked in these events is the significance of the KGB anticorruption campaigns of 1982 to 1987.

In this original study, Luc Duhamel focuses on the KGB's investigation into Moscow's two largest trade organizations and reveals the multifarious networks of influence peddling, appointments, and clientelism that pervaded these organizations and connected them to Party officials. Based on unique access to the archives of the KGB and the prosecutor general's office, Duhamel demonstrates how the indictments of thousands of trade organization employees and the reprimands of Communist Party members ultimately led to a power struggle that contributed substantially to the political unraveling of the Soviet system. --Book Jacket.