For Russians, Corruption Is Just a Way of Life

Are these just two friends, left, having lunch? Corruption is such a part of daily life that it’s hard to tell what might be going on in dark places.

By MISHA FRIEDMAN

CORRUPTION in Russia is so pervasive that the whole society accepts the unacceptable as normal, as the only way of survival, as the way things “just are.”

It is not simply about officials abusing power; it’s also about ordinary people comfortably adapting these principles to their daily lives.

Most Russians have grown so accustomed to a certain lawless way of life that they have come to view corruption as “Russia’s own special way.” They are unsure how their country’s economy, government or social sphere might function without it. This photo essay is an attempt to show that corruption is both a state of mind and a way of life.

Thousands of people in Russia’s large cities took to the streets in recent months, unhappy with President Vladimir V. Putin’s system of running the country. Under his leadership, they believe, Russia is steadily becoming a medieval country with corruption trumping all laws. These people have traveled the world, and they feel embarrassed when their peers in London, New York or Berlin ask about the Pussy Riot trial or the imprisonment of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky. Members of this new class of Russians often hide their nationality just to avoid being compared to their country’s ruling elite or asked questions that they cannot answer.

I was born in Moldova, then part of the Soviet Union, but moved to New York in the early 1990s when my parents immigrated here. For more than a decade I have been going back to Russia, noticing how the country has become more and more corrupt and lawless. I have been working on this project for the past six months. I see corruption as more than something done to people; it is something they participate in. It involves both a resignation to and a justification of a state of iniquity, insecurity and mistrust.

This project was financed by the Institute of Modern Russia, a nonprofit group based in the United States that aims, among other things, to combat Russian corruption.

Misha Friedman is a photographer whose subjects have included the humanitarian crisis in northern Uganda, violence in Nigeria and the war in Darfur.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on August 19, 2012, on page SR6 of the New York edition with the headline: For Russians, Corruption Is Just A Way of Life.