I caught a glimpse of Vladimir Putin‘s Russia in a Moscow police station 25 years ago.

The USSR was disintegrating around me. I was a University of Pennsylvania graduate student in Russian history spending a year in Moscow poring over newly declassified Soviet Communist Party archives. As I immersed myself in documents that revealed startling details about the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, the revolution of 1991-92 was transforming the Soviet Union.

Although on the streets things seemed orderly, beneath the surface it was clear that the situation was precarious. The farcical putsch of August 1991, led by the KGB and some top military leaders, had failed to remove the reformer Mikhail Gorbachev from office.

Yet the attempted coup triggered an unexpected series of events culminating in the implosion of the USSR within months. The old communist state crumbled and a shaky new government, under the erratic leadership of Boris Yeltsin, took its place.

Amid this tumult, one day near Red Square I was swarmed by a group of about 10 young Roma children. (Roma are often derogatorily referred to as “gypsies.”)

They grabbed at my backpack, which contained my precious notes from months of work in the archives. As I clenched the bag, one of the boys deftly fished my wallet from my pocket. Just as quickly, they scattered in every direction.

I immediately headed to the closest police station to report the crime. When I explained the situation to the officer in charge, he kindly invited me to his office. After a little chat, he casually mentioned that there would be a price for police and prosecutors to pursue the culprits. Surprised, I told him “No,” that I wouldn’t pay a bribe for police service.

He accepted my refusal with a shrug, and then he served me tea and cookies. As we snacked, the officer gave me some fatherly advice. I needed to protect myself, he said, so I should go out and buy the kind of club that the police carried. If I saw any Roma, he recommended that I whack them with my stick.

I asked him how the police would react if they saw me walking around Moscow beating up Roma children with a baton. He thought for a moment before answering: “I think we would say, ‘Thank you.’” Seeing my shock, he asked, with a degree of approval, whether I knew that, after all, Hitler had put the Roma in concentration camps.

This alarming conversation foreshadowed some of the darker trends that have become more prominent in recent years: corruption, extreme nationalism and a disrespect for the rule of law, all growing in the fertile soil of national disintegration.

The complete collapse of the economy gave rise to hyper-inflation rates of more than 2,000 percent within a year, wiping out savings and making pensions nearly worthless. Sudden poverty fed public hostility toward what seemed like the chaos and injustice that capitalism‘s “free markets” had wrought. Russia’s middle class still has not fully recovered.

It is an enduring tragedy of Russia‘s history that tremendous economic uncertainty appeared precisely at the same time as the first wave of post-Soviet leaders introduced democratic reforms and free markets, discrediting them in the eyes of much of the population.

Simultaneously, rampant corruption by political and economic elites raised further suspicions among ordinary people about the new democracy. Unabashed bribe-taking by local officials demoralized the population.

Suddenly, it appeared that everything in Russia was for sale, as state-owned enterprises were looted by insiders. Before the fall of communism, even toilet paper wasn’t available in stores. Now, anything at all could be had, with the right amount of money and connections. Nothing happened, it seemed, without money changing hands.

In Soviet times, bribery had developed into a kind of art form. Because capture could lead to imprisonment, bureaucrats disguised their demands for payments. Yet, as I witnessed in the semi-anarchy of post-collapse Russia, bureaucrats in a position to take bribes dispensed with any subtlety. They preferred -- and still prefer -- a direct, quick, and cash-based deal.

Justice was for sale, just like everything else. My experience in the police station was one stark example of an all-too-frequent disregard for the rule of law. This lack of accountability persists today, encouraged by an authoritarian state.

Like the policeman with whom I shared tea, many people embraced a virulent Russian nationalism, scapegoating and demonizing non-Russian minorities for the tidal wave of problems that beset them. In the officer‘s suggestion that I take matters into my own hands and attack the Roma, one sees an embedded, race- or ethnicity-based suspicion of outsiders. For that officer and many other Russians, the two best tools for obtaining justice seemed to be a bribe in one hand and a club in the other.

The roots of the popularity of Putin and the extreme Russian nationalists who surround him can be found in the chaotic months following the fall of the USSR in 1991.

Putin did not invent the social tensions, economic uncertainty and nationalist hostility that characterized Russia in those unsettled years. He has merely fanned them, capitalizing on them with extraordinary expertise to consolidate his power.

By James Heinzen

James Heinzen is a professor of history at Rowan University and the author of “The Art of the Bribe: Corruption under Stalin, 1943-1953,” which will be released in November. He wrote this for The Philadelphia Inquirer. -- Ed.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

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