RUSSIA: Corrupt academics, bureaucrats and politicians

A Siberian university student bit back when a bribe he was asked to pay a teacher to pass an examination failed to deliver the success. The final-year student at Tyumen State Agricultural Institute, more than 2,000 kilometres east of Moscow, complained to state prosecutors when his 39-year-old senior lecturer in the faculty of soil science and agrochemistry demanded a 2,000 rouble ($85) bribe. The student told investigators that although the bribe was paid, the expected exam pass was not forthcoming. An investigation into this case – and other suspected incidents of financial extortion at the institute – is underway.

Corruption in Russian higher education has long been an endemic problem. The most recent in-depth study into the problem was carried out by Moscow's Indem Foundation, a democracy-oriented think tank run by Georgy Satatov.

The four year study, which tracked corruption across Russian society between 2001 and 2005, put the annual cost of the black market in bribery at $3 billion, with higher education institutions accounting for $580 million of that in 2005.

Overall, corruption across the higher education sector accounted for around 21% of the total market, with two in every three students and their families willing to resort to paying education officials, administrators and tutors to secure places, exam results or other benefits.

The Indem study, based on representative interviews with 2,000 Russians in 2001 and 3,000 in 2005, found both an increase in the number, range and cost of bribes – and the willingness of ordinary people to pay them.

The study coincided with most of President Vladimir Putin's first term and the first year of his second term. It confirmed other studies that have noted a growth of corruption in Putin's Russia. President-elect Dmitry Medvedev has vowed to root out corruption and launch a campaign against what he calls Russia's 'legal nihilism'.

He is likely to find it a tough nut to crack. Many commentators link Russia's increased post-Soviet corruption to the rapid increase in state bureaucrats – who now number five million. Many senior bureaucrats are powerful figures and a study last year by Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a leading Russian researcher into post-Soviet power elites, found that four out of five political leaders and state administrators in Russia are active or former members of the KGB or its successor security services.