There was some corruption in Soviet Union (like in most countries around the world with the exception of economically developed or/and democratic countries) but it was not fatal.

Corruption in modern Russia is unique to Putin's regime - he used it (and still uses) as a tool to concentrate power - he puts in position of power only corrupt officials as a mean to get full loyalty - officials not loyal enough can be easily blackmailed, secret services have enough "kompromat" to put any government official into jail but are waiting for a signal from above. Corruption is the foundation for what in Russia called the "vertical of power", which essentially means that a person in a power structure have almost unlimited (limited only by Putin, but not by the law) power over people below.

Looks like this tool has spun out of control.

> There was some corruption in Soviet Union ... but if[sic] was not fatal

It was actually fatal. I've studied the corruption that emerged under the Soviets; it was systemic and, in fact, necessary to mitigate the crippling adversities created by Soviet ideology. It is the primary reason the Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago.

I was born in the Soviet Union, read book about Soviet economy and political system (albeit not scientific ones) and have a different take. Corruption is a broad term and one can probably say it was a contribution factor, but may take is that inefficiency of economy and misguided foreign policy (including Afghanistan invasion) were the fatal flaws.

When selecting who to delegate power to, all soviet leaders selected people who are loyal to them and suitable for the job. Loyalty was more important than competence so government was full of incompetent people, but competence was not a disqualifying factor so some of them was able to do the job.

In Putin's power structure people who not steal and cannot be easily blackmailed are not promoted high enough. Being not corrupt _is_ a disqualifying factor. Putin at least in the beginning of his career maintained visibility of a country with the rule of law, so instead jailing opponents on a whim he jailed them for breaking the law, but the law was enforced selectively only for ones who are not fully loyal.

As a result in modern Russia personal enrichment is a much bigger problem that it was in Soviet Union. Soviet nomenklatura [1] was rich compare to poor population but their quality of life was not much better than for upper-middle class in the US. The same nor the case for modern Russia.

Failure of soviet economy as I know was not result of corruption - much more resources were wasted than stolen. Unfortunately I cannot provide any sources here - all I read was in Russian and I cannot find translations to English.

I've seen this inefficiency myself in form of many thousands tons of trees which were cut so harvesting organization would meet KPI for amount of harvested wood but left to rot in the forest because an organization which should transport the wood had not enough capacity to do this (but likely transported all volume on paper, which you may say is corruption, but resources were wasted, not stolen).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura

Dude, the countries behind Iron Curtain had so much corruption it was insane. In a place where you have trouble buying meat or fruits the only way to get it is to bribe someone and for that someone to lie and/or steal to get it for you.

My country was behind an iron curtain and one of the motto's of that time was: "If one doesn't embelish from the state it means one's embelishing from their family". Even with democracy this mentality won't fully go away for generations. Russia continued on that trajectory to a worse state.

If only they realized that if the whole population is richer, their "allowed" portion can go sky high :D