Welcome back to the podcast, bribe, swindle, or steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge, and today we're talking about the nature and extent of corruption

in Stalin's Soviet Union.

My guest is Jim Heinzen.

Jim is a professor at Roan University in New Jersey, where he specializes in the

history of modern Russia, including crime and corruption. We're going to chat today about his

book, The Art of the Brib, Corruption Under Stalin, 1943 to 1953, as well as how his research informs

our understanding of corruption in Russia today. Jim, thank you for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me. Your book covers late Stalinism as the country is

struggling to recover from the overwhelming devastation that they suffered during and in the

aftermath of the Second World War. Can you talk us through just at a high level,

what bribery looked like in the Soviet Union at that time?

I'm interested in bribery in Soviet history, partly because it is so hidden.

And it was never talked about publicly.

It was not mentioned in the press,

except in the very rarest of circumstances. And this period of late Stalinism after World War

2 until Stalin dies in the early 50s is the least known of all periods in Soviet history.

There are very few foreign travelers. So we just didn't know very much

about it. That includes historians. And that's why I became interested in this exact period.

As a historian who knows Russian, I traveled frequently to archives in Moscow, the former Soviet

State Archives and the former Communist Party archives.

I've been to his archives probably 15 times in the last 30 years doing research trips.

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