recorder” and may be “turned on” at any moment, meaning that anyone may ask him or her to sing at any moment for someone’s pleasure. This subordinate position brings down the status of the convict who thus cannot be very popular or prestigious. But in normal life outside of prison, these songs acquired tremendous popularity starting from the second half of the twentieth century.
Contemporary prison songs originate from the older traditions of the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, such as brigand songs of those in active opposition to the state and social authorities, drawling songs of hard-labor convicts, and thieves’ cant as a creature of urban environment closely related to the genre of city romance. The latter became widespread at the turn of the twentieth century due to rapid social changes and marginal-ization of Russian society in the years of the Revolution. The most popular song of the period, Murka, tells a dramatic story of an undercover policewoman killed by her criminal lover for her betrayal.
From the second half of the twentieth century, prison songs occupied a leading position in Soviet underground culture. In the 1960s the most popular bards, such as Vladimir Vysotsky, Alexander Galich, and others, attracted intelligentsia by singing prison songs, thus giving a form of expression of hidden protest against the regime. In their songs prison is associated with the state as a whole; it is implied that under this regime everone is a convict, whether past, present, or future. Rich metaphorical content, antistate motivation, and strong heroic poetics made these songs the sign of the time when the truth about the regime became known with gulag prisoners first being rehabilitated after Stalin’s death. This tradition stems from the political, not the criminal, environment and was closely connected to the dissident movement of the time.
In contrast to the dissident content of prison songs of the 1960s and 1970s, contemporary prison songs emphasize the criminal element more and are targeted at a specific audience with a clear criminal past and present. Recently these songs successfully entered the popular music industry. These songs are based on the most popular genre of contemporary prison folklore such as ballads. Most of them are “humble” songs: They aim at compassion for the lot of any marginal personality, such as thieves, prostitute, and social outcasts. Their subject is misery, tragic accident, or cruel destiny. Several verses of the ballad cover the entire life of the hero with its happiness, tears, love and betrayal, crime, and custody. Another type of song, by contrast, aims to unite people who share asocial values as a group claiming brotherhood and heroism of a few against conventional authorities. See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; GULAG; PRISONS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Stites, Richard. (1992). Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Privatization may be pursued with different aims in mind. The political aim is to break away from the past and create a new class of capitalists as quickly as possible. The efficiency aim is to create a better management system for the enterprises, and to set up a market environment. If this aim is dominant, it requires complex institution- building and thus precludes rapid completion of the process. Privatization may have a financial aim: in this case the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) should be sold at their highest value so as to bring revenues to the state. Finally, an equity aim may involve returning property to those who had been deprived of it by the nationalization process (an aim pursued in some Central European countries), giving priority to employees for buying shares in their enterprises, or even giving away state assets to the citizens.
In Russia, privatization began in January 1992, together with the implementation of the stabilization program, and assumed the form of liberalization of small-scale trade (street vending). This “small privatization” was conducted at a quick pace in the services sector, which consisted of trade, catering, services to households, construction, individual transportation activities, and housing. It was often marred by racketeering and crime. The small-scale state enterprises (which had already been transferred to the local authorities in 1991) were sold to citizens, local entrepreneurs, and/or employees, basically through auctions. At the same time, as prices and individual activities were liberalized, it became immediately possible to create new, small-scale businesses, especially in fields where human capital was the main requirement, such as consulting, engineering, private teaching, and computer services. Actually, such activities were already privately conducted in the Soviet era within the shadow economy.
The main challenge lay in the privatization of the big SOEs, or large-scale privatization. The Russian government was clearly privileging the political objective, and hence opted for a quick mass privatization scheme. It also favored equity considerations, so that the people would benefit from the divestment of the state. In June 1992, the mass privatization program was adopted, and in October the voucher system was launched. All Russian citizens received 10,000 rubles’ worth of privatization vouchers (equivalent then to 50 U.S. dollars), immediately redeemable in cash, or exchangeable against shares in the enterprises selected for privatization that had been transformed into joint stock companies. These enterprises were sold at direct public auctions. The staff (employees and management) could opt for three variants, of which the most popular was the allocation of 51 percent of the shares to the employees at a discounted price. Seventy percent of the enterprises were thus privatized by the end of June 1994; past this deadline the vouchers were no longer valid. The second wave of large-scale privatization proceeded much more slowly and was far from complete in 2002. It had to be based upon sales to foreigners or domestic buyers. It was slowed by several factors: the Russian financial crisis of 1998, which led to a collapse of the banking sector; the scandals linked with the outcomes of the first wave, when several notorious deals evidenced the dominant role of insiders who managed to acquire large assets with very little cash; and, finally, the enormous stakes of the second wave, which involved privatization of the energy sector (oil, gas, and electricity) and the telecommunications sector.
Who owned the Russian enterprises? The most prominent owners were the oligarchs, who controlled the largest firms of the energy and raw materials sector, but who became less powerful after Boris Yeltsin’s resignation in 1999. More generally, the former nomenklatura of the Soviet system, along with a small number of newcomers, took advantage of a privatization process lacking transparency and clear legal rules. Restructuring of enterprises and improving of corporate governance did not proceed along with the change in ownership. Privatization was close to completion in Russia as of 2002, when 75 percent of the GDP was created by the private sector. However, the private sector had yet to function according to the rules of a transparent market. See also: ECONOMY, POST- SOVIET; LIBERALISM; SHOCK THERAPY; TRANSITION ECONOMIES.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boycko, Maxim; Shlejfer, Andrei; and Vishny, Robert. (1995). Privatizing Russia. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). (1999). Transition Report 1999: Ten Years of Transition. London: EBRD. Hedlund, Stefan. (2001). “Property Without Rights: Dimensions of Russian Privatisation.” Europe-Asia Studies 53(2):213-237.
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The prosecutor’s office in the Russian Federation plays a pivotal role in law enforcement, including criminal investigations and prosecution, representation of the state’s interests in civil disputes, supervision of the functioning of prisons and places of detention, and investigation of citizens’ grievances.
The Procuracy was introduced in 1722 by Peter the Great in an effort to create a public law system similar to those in Western Europe. However, in practice, the Procuracy focused primarily on supervising the prompt and full execution of the tsar’s edicts. Catherine II extended procuratorial supervision to regional and local levels, where procurators served as the “eyes of the tsar” in monitoring the activity of provincial governors and other officials. This function was widely resented by provincial governors and was eliminated by the legal reforms of 1864.
A decree of November 24, 1917, of the Council of People’s Commissars abolished the Procuracy and all other tsarist legal institutions in favor of more informal control mechanisms. In 1922 the Bolshevik government
