In The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz, Mordecai Richler Clearly Inten

In the Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Mordecai Richler plainly expects to depict his principle character as a disappointment. Duddy sees completely well that a man must seek after his fantasies, which is the reason he is one of the most persuaded youngster of his time. From the second Duddy hears his granddad state, A man without land is no one, he is set up to look for the place where there is his fantasies. This desire of Duddy's is entirely decent, however shockingly his strategies are absolutely improper, and that prompts him being a disappointment. The second that Duddy started to inundate himself into the foundation of his film organization, it could be seen that he was happy to effectively get cash, regardless of whether he needed to lie. For instance, the film Duddy made for the Jewish right of passage was of very low quality, and thus, the item was an undeniable disappointment. Duddy himself realized that well: Duddy didn't let out the slightest peep all however the screening yet a short time later he was debilitated to his stomach. (Page 148). Afterward, Duddy said to Mr. Minister: I could sell Mr. Cohn a dead pony simpler then this heap of _ (page 148). After this specific occurrence, Duddy doesn't talk genuinely to his customers. Taking everything into account, the main way Duddy sells his waste movies is by lying. He generally deceives gain cash, and that is all that Duddy thinks about. Duddy has never been cherished in his family, so initially he was very substance to realize that Yvette thinks about him. Toward the start, Yvette and Duddy are infatuated. It's so ideal to see you lie still for once, she said. Your continually running or bouncing or scratching. Duddy was amazed and complimented to find that anybody sufficiently minded to watch him so intently. (Page 92) As time cruised by, in any case, Duddy started to utilize Yvette as a device. The principle explanation behind that is Duddy was endeavoring to get the land, and since he couldn't legitimately claim it as a minor, he utilized Yvette to go about as a nonentity in his buy. This treatment of Yvette, joined with her breaking attaches with her family because of Duddy being a Jew, is the thing that ruins their relationship. As Yvette states: My sibling discovered I'm living with you...I won't have the option to see my folks once more. (Page 218). Virgil is another sort of casualty that Duddy exploits, because of his physical incapacities. This can be seen when Duddy takes the snuck pinball machines from Virgil. Duddy swindles him out of the cash for the machines by giving him a truck and an occupation that takes care of the expense of the truck. In any case, the expense of the truck was lower than the expense of the pinball machine. Another way Duddy exploit Virgil is by taking cash out of his financial balance for the land Duddy investigated Virgil's bank balance, whistled, noticed his record number and tore out two checks. He produced the mark by holding the check and a letter Virgil had joined to the window and following gradually. (Page 304) Duddy utilizes other sad inability as just another reasonable method to progress to his own objectives. Taking everything into account, Duddy has clearly picked an inappropriate sort of man to become, which prompts his apprenticeship being a disappointment. He has decided to turn into a warped individual, lying to Mr. Cohn, Virgil, and Yvette. He exploits Yvette only for her property, and he exploits Virgil because of his handicaps. Duddy can be viewed as a degenerate and heartless man. It is absolutely tragic that he picked an inappropriate way at a youthful age, and kept moving along that way. He winds up being viewed as a disappointment. Book index Richler, Mordecai. The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Penguin Books: Toronto, 1984.

Inventory period and operating cycle Essay Example for Free

Stock period and working cycle Essay Time of stock will show the quantity of days that stock of COSCO is being held before they are sold. Expanding or diminishing the equivalent must be a guided by the goal of keeping up a decent working capital condition. COSCO Wholesale has stock time of 27 days. Before suggestion could be made whether its stock period ought to be expanded, said stock period must be contrasted and the installment terms with providers. On the off chance that the company’s installment terms (Bernstein, 1993) to provider is 30 days them the period of stock of 27 days is a decent sign that the organization is making offer of stock proficiently, which implies that it can sell quicker than whenever the organization requests and pays for these merchandise. For COSCO to keep up its 27 days stock period, it should likewise tie this up with assortment period since higher deals volume is ordinarily connected with longer assortment period. Expanding deals using a loan with longer assortment will diminish stock period and the two will summarize to working cycle (Meigs and Meigs, 1995). On the off chance that the subsequent working cycle despite everything permits a decent and reasonable working capital circumstance, at that point expanding deals using a loan must be done up to such point, in any case bungled working could turn the organization incapable to meet right now developing commitments. Working Cycle COSCO’S working cycle is 30 says which comprises of 27 days stock period and 3 days assortment period. To decide if suggestions ought to be made whether the cycle could be expanded or diminished ought to be tied up on it working capital circumstance. On the off chance that its current working capital circumstance permits the organization to meet it as of now developing commitments then its working cycle is perfect. As examined before, the procedure on working cycle is influenced by choices made on period of stock and arrangement on making deals using a loan. One couldn't simply diminish working cycle without premise like by diminishing period of stock by underinvestment as this could mean not fulfilling the interest for company’s items for shorter time of stock and thusly shorter working cycle. The company’s arrangement on deals on layaway must be sufficiently adequate to meet sensible focuses regarding deals incomes and working capital prerequisites (Brigham and Houston, 2002).

Write the Perfect Cover Letter Every Time

Write the Perfect Cover Letter Every Time Every day most of us write letters, and many of these letters are cover letters. A cover letter is a special type of correspondence. It accompanies another piece of correspondence that many times actually competes with the effect and content of the letter. That other correspondence is an enclosure or what is more commonly called today an attachment. It can also be a package.Cover letters can accompany various kinds of documents: A resume or CV, a school application, a legal document, a manuscript, or an item were returning to a store, Many writers think a cover letter is nothing more than a form letter, a template that simply announces the attached package or document(s). The enclosure or attachment is really whats important. To paraphrase Joe Friday from the old television series, Dragnet, a lot of people think a cover letter should only address the facts and nothing else. Just the facts, please. Nothing but the facts, this policeman would say every Friday night.A perfect cover lett er, however, is a lot more than a template or a form letter. Its an opportunity. It is not a document that should just end up in File 13. A perfect cover letter communicates who you are and what you want or need. A perfect cover letter can ask for a response, make an argument, or deliver a great final positive impression. It asks the reader to make a decision. That decision can be to pick up the phone and call you for an interview, forward your college application to the Admissions Committee as highly recommended, solve a service problem or write a refund check, answer a question and get you to the right person, or acknowledge that a legal document has finally been correctly handled.For all of these reasons, a cover letter is a special piece of writing and one that is far too often overlooked, simply dashed off, signed, and stuck in an envelope or clicked through the Internet via your e-mail account. You dont think of the impression you are making or the extra advantages a cover let ter can provide you. When you need to write a cover letter, and we all write them, what techniques do you need to remember and apply? How do you write the perfect cover letter?First of all, the perfect letter is brief, i.e., short. It shouldnt be more than one page and preferably a short single page, if possible. What does one page mean? It means 3 to 4 paragraphs. Short also means precise as well as concise. Each one of these 3-4 paragraphs has a special task. The tasks can vary a bit based on the topic, and the paragraphs can be exchanged one for the other Sometimes (very rarely), you can add another paragraph and once in a blue moon, maybe even one more for a very complex situation, such as the job of the decade for which you have tons of background and experience. But, do your utmost if you can to keep the words in your letter to one page. Why? Because this correspondence is still only a cover letter. It accompanies another document or series of documents that are the prime reas on for your correspondence in the first placeA good cover letter is subtle and respectful, but it still makes its points strongly and clearly. It stays in the background but is remembered. It doesnt run on and is never rude or hostile, or cute. It can argue but does so judiciously and with verbal discipline, and unless absolutely needed, the letter always communicates gracefully and politely and expects a positive outcome.A good cover letter also provides information â€" additional information that explains why you sent the attached document and what you want done with that document or for you because of it. There is a pattern of communication you can use to get this letter written quickly and successfully. There are specific tips to remember for each of the paragraphs in your cover letter.Paragraph One: This paragraph states the reasons why youre sending the letter, i.e., what is attached and why. Be specific about the nature of the attachment, i.e., a resume and summary of publica tions or a patients advocate form with a will. You should introduce yourself, state what is attached and why. For instance, if you are replying to a specific job position, you give the details of how you found the opening and the nature of the position. If you are forwarding a college application, you state that fact and indicate whether it is a packet of essays or just a formal application. If you are returning an item, you indicate what it is and when you bought it, and why it doesnt work for you. If you are forwarding a document, you state the title and why you are sending it. You then lead into Paragraph Two with a final sentence that previews your explanation of the problem, the reason why you need a refund, when you expect to start school, or why the position youve referenced is the one you really want to have.Paragraph Two: This paragraph is where you provide the details and elaborate on the basics you provided in Paragraph One. Here you can summarize the issue, explain the p roblem, describe the history of the document, or summarize your background to support the interest you expressed in the position youre applying for in Paragraph One. Try to be brief, but also include as many precise details as possible. That is a challenge. As space allows, argue well for the circumstance that led to your contacting the addressee in the first place. This can be the longest of the four paragraphs because here is where you describe the situation or indicate your qualifications or give your reasons. This paragraph is also the one that, if necessary, you can expand to two paragraphs or at the very outside limits, three. If you do, shorten the other paragraphs. Remember that you only want one page!Paragraph Three: This paragraph is where you make your argument for what you want done, i.e., get a phone call for a job interview, get admission into the ideal program or school for your education or career, get a document recorded properly, or have a consumer complaint addres sed, i.e., a refund given or a warranty honored. This paragraph is where you can be a bit forceful, when needed, and indicate when you expect the task to be completed. I would not be forceful if the cover letter is accompanying an application. If that is the case, present your best reasons for getting the positive answer you want and stop and hope for that response.Paragraph Four: This paragraph is a summing up paragraph. Here you reiterate what you want done, when you need it done, and why. Here is the place where you are firm, but very courteous if you are trying to get a problem resolved. Here is the place where you are gracious and express kind words about a company or a school if you want a job or admission. Here is also the paragraph where you state your contact information, i.e., e-mail address and phone numbers, and express your absolute confidence that you will receive a positive response or action soon. You can also offer a final hope that your application will be positive ly received, if that is the reason for the cover letter. State at the very end also that if there are any questions or concerns, the recipient, of course, can contact you, and you will respond immediately.So there it is â€" a formula for writing a cover letter that will cover most of the circumstances you are likely to see when you are sending documents. A perfect cover letter is short, covers all the details of what is being sent and why, paraphrases the nature of the attachment(s) briefly, makes a laid-back sales pitch or delivers a courteous argument, leaves a final positive impression, and encourages an early positive response. If you keep these tips in mind and adjust them as needed for your own cover letters, youll find that your letters will do that extra bit of communication for you. Its that communication you may just need to get a task done, a problem resolved, or an offer for a great job.

My Dad - Original Writing - 1598 Words

February 27, 2002 was the last time I told my father I loved him. I was home watching old action movies and preparing for school that night, when my little brother barged into my bedroom and jokingly demanded that I come to my step mom’s house and have a sleepover with her kids. I declined and reassured my little brother that I was most definitely not coming because our dad was cooking his famous gumbo and renting an action movie from Blockbuster! I loved movies so much that as a child, my dad called me the VCR bandit. After about what seemed to be a million pleases from my brother, I finally caved and said yes! As I got my bags packed and began to enter my step mom’s car, I yelled to my dad, â€Å"I love you daddy!† and he yelled back, â€Å"I love you too, Boo Boo!† That next morning my little brother, step siblings and I started to get ready for school. While fumbling with my hair in the mirror I thought to myself, â€Å"Hey, I actually had fun. This wasn’t so bad after all. â€Å"When the four of us finished getting dressed, we ran upstairs to wake my step mom but she wasn’t there. Maybe she ran to the store or something I thought. About an hour later, I started to get agitated because she nor my dad had made it to take us to school and neither one was answering their phones. Twenty minutes later, my step mom s sister called the house phone and said she was coming over to take us to school. Finally! I said. When she got there, she had a look of fear and uncertainty on her face. As sheShow MoreRelatedMy Dad - Original Writing Essay751 Words   |  4 Pagesit was going to be a normal day, but, I was wrong. Growing up, my mom told my sisters and I about my Uncle. How he was hot tempered and did things that were crazy when he didn t get his way. My mom and his relationship has always been tense. From what I ve seen, and from what she has told me. When she got shot by him that day, it proved to me that she was right. It was just a normal day. My mother sister, and I, driving around. My uncle had called and told us how he had gotten a new pit bullRead MoreMy Dad - Original Writing822 Words   |  4 Pages LIZZI Has your Dad ever been president and you found a dog while walking home from school and you named it Lizzi? well I have. Oh let me introduce myself. My name is Maggie Johnson and i live in Washington D.C and my dad is the President of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. IT was Sunday, I was walking home from Isabella ‘s house. There was this box .That said â€Å"Adopt me please†. I looked inside in the box and it was a cute,tiny,Little puppy.I took the box home with me to the dad’s office. When IRead MoreMy Dad - Original Writing746 Words   |  3 PagesI heard the footsteps of my dad upstairs and the leaves in the trees rustling in the wind. I listened closely for the lighter footsteps of my brother. The one that should be getting ready to help my dad with the boat. When I heard nothing I felt my heart start to ache with frustration. I immediately felt dizzy as I stumbled out of bed too quickly, and tried to climb the stairs. The kitchen smelled fresh compared to the musty smell of my room and the early morning news played quietly from the televisionRead MoreMy Dad - Original Writing863 Words   |  4 Pageswas a drizzling Saturday morning, when my dad pulled into the driveway as my excitement bubbling from within. My dad opened up the little dog carrier and there was a small chocolate lab cowering in the corner. As my dad handed my brother this little shaking puppy, he received his bright red collar with little tags on it. My dad promptly asked, â€Å"What should we name him†? I responded with Dexter. My brother on the other hand wanted to name him Basco. With my dad as the final decision he became knownRead MoreMy Dad - Original Writing947 Words   |  4 Pagesstarted out with my grandpa. My grandpa was a funny guy to be around. He always made you smile. He was always smiling and cheerful too. That s what made your day by seeing his smile. His smile was a ray of sunshine. You never saw him hurt till the day he found out that something was wrong with him. Then after that day you have never seen him smile. Life s too short to take for granted. I realized that after I lost my grandpa to cancer. It was the hardest year of my life. Losing someoneRead MoreMy Dad - Original Writing Essay1358 Words   |  6 Pages sent a shiver up my back. As he gets into his off-colored white car, he waves to us as if it is the last time he might get to see us. When he starts to drive away, I hear the click, click, click, as his car zooms away. We go back inside and my mom burst into tears. The tears fall down her face one by one until she manages to calm herself. My dad left. For how long? We had no idea. My parents met when my mom was nineteen and still in college. My dad is ten years older than my mom, but they hitRead MoreMy Dad - Original Writing Essay1278 Words   |  6 Pageszooms away. We go back inside and my mom bursts into tears. The tears fall down her face one by one until she manages to calm herself. My dad left. For how long? We had no idea. My parents met when my mom was nineteen and still in college. My dad is ten years older than my mom but they hit it off the night they met. My mom says, â€Å"He was the cutest guy ever.† They dated for about three years and then got pregnant with me. About six months later they got married. My parents have never got along theRead MoreDescriptive Essay : Goodbye Dad 1360 Words   |  6 PagesThe heels of my shoes were clomping against the smoky blue floor, and the overpowering malodour of musky medicines, infused me with a sense of fear and even disgust. The subtle yellow walls didn’t make me feel welcome, and every time I brushed passed them, they filled me with a repugnant anxious feeling. The hairs on my arms were sticking up, and a chill ran down my spine from the coldness occupying the hallways. I saw my father lay still on the crisp white bed sheets, and my mother stuck by hisRead MoreAnalysis Of John Steinbeck s Of Mice And Men 1564 Words   |  7 Pagescrit icism and crazy, there is no limit to what you can accomplish. The first genre I chose to include is poetry because it shows how Steinbeck’s personal life could have been. I also chose to include a journal entry because Steinbeck’s certain writing style is unique and would be intriguing to see how he creates his magnificent ideas for his stories. The third genre is an news article because the life of John Steinbeck’s is one that shows how his early life and developments as a young writer andRead MoreWhat Is Constantly Introspective1479 Words   |  6 PagesConstantly introspective my practice is a series of contradictions concerning text, the public and the private, personal histories, concrete poetry, and material fixations. Torn between concealing and revealing, my practice is trapped in a permanent state of vulnerability with slivers of personal assurance allowing confronting texts to be read and interpreted by viewers. In an attempt to transform my flat two dimensional writings into tangible objects I have started to approach different materials

Environmental Sustainability Through Architecture ...

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH ARCHITECTURE Introduction: Climate change is an important topic as it affects all of society as well as the globes ecosystems. Many professions have the ability to combat climate change and its effects. This essay will look at the roles and responsibilities of an Architect and the influence they can have on the mitigation and adaption of climate climate change through the profession. The following discussion will focus on defining and explaining climate change, defining an architect and outlining their roles and responsibilities and finally addressing how the profession of architect can influence mitigation and adaption strategies. An architect does play a significant role in the influence and†¦show more content†¦In the last century the climate of the earth has morphed and changed as a result of global warming. The rise in temperature has contributed to the decreasing size of glaciers and ice sheets as well as contributing the the rise of sea levels due to warmer oceans. The current evidence points t o human activity as a contributing factor. With the evidence currently available if can be predicted that with continuing greenhouse gas emissions, the earth s air temperature will warm by 4 °C by the year 2100. Furthermore there are likely to be many flow-on effects from this temperature change (Australian Academy of Science 2015) With the change in climate the impacts of this process has altered the frequency and strength of daily temperatures in terms of more hot days and warmer days as well as a drop in the quantity of cooler days. Furthermore as a result the amount of more extreme weather events such as cyclones and heavy rain patterns has increased as a result of warmer climates as well as warmer water temperatures (Australian Academy of Science 2015). Over the last century sea level rise has occurred as a result of expansion of the ocean due to warmer temperatures as well as the decreasing size of ice packs and glaciers. This has caused a global sea level change of 10-25cm (IPCC 1995). Climate change influences the

Constitutional Law Paper Free Essays

Constitutional Law Paper BY ctndoee_272 Constitutional Law Mid Term Paper It is evident that over the past few years, American Democracy has been loosing its power. The causes toward this effect are many. Some amongst the many are decreased political participation and the minimum quality of functioning of government. We will write a custom essay sample on Constitutional Law Paper or any similar topic only for you Order Now Before understanding that these are some of the effects that has caused the waning in American Democracy one must understand what Democracy is and its measures as well. Democracy is a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state. It is equal access to power where the people are the supreme source of that power. There are rights, laws, and policies that reflect the will of the people, consent of the governed, and popular sovereignty. Amongst the government, there are 6 basic principles within the democracy. They are Popular Sovereignty, Rule of Law, Separation of Powers, Checks and Balances, Judicial Review, and Federalism. The U. S Constitution is built upon these basic principles. It is logical that by having these 6 principles to abide by, the U. S Democracy would have the highest ranking hen it comes to measures of Democracy. It would make sense that American Democracy would have a high rank in the following categories: Electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture; but, in reality it isn’t that way. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIIJ), the United States has a world rank of 19 as opposed to Norway who has a ranking of 1 . The Democracy Index developed by the Ell-J shows that the U. S is has the lowest ranking for political participation. This is one of the factors that are causing our government to lose power. This political issue is caused by the voting requirements set. Under California law, you must meet several requirements in order to be able to vote in state and local elections. You must be a U. S. citizen, and a resident of California, who is eighteen years of age or older, or who will be eighteen years or older on the date of the next election. Additionally, you must not be in prison or on parole for a felony conviction. Finally, you must not have been found to be mentally incompetent by a court. With these voting requirements set, we are limiting the amount of people who can vote and participate in elections. Democracy, as a system of governance, is supposed to allow extensive representation and inclusiveness of as many people and views as possible to feed into the functioning of a fair and Just society. â€Å"Limitations to the amount of people who can vote, voter apathy, disenfranchisement, parties not representing people, and voter intimidation are all reasons for a low voter turnout† . The common criticism leveled at those who do not vote seems to be to blame them or being apathetic and irresponsible, noting that â€Å"with rights come responsibilities. There is often some truth to this, but not only are those other reasons for not voting lost in the assumption of apathy, but voting itself isn’t the only important task for an electorate. Being able to make informed decisions is also important. In a local voting survey conducted by the class the question that followed if the person was eligible to vo e † Then why don’t you vote? † was asked t . I was d iscovered that the reason many people do not vote is because they are not informed correctly or there is the bservation that the leading parties are not that different from each other and they do not offer much said to the voter. The media not being much help or being biased sometimes also make it harder for the electorate to make an intellectual decision. In addition, the other percent of the people surveyed responded that they have little or no time to vote. A solution to this political issue is to make voting easier and more convenient. With this said, establishing no excuse absentee ballots would introduce an early voting system that would allow thousands of voters to vote at their onvenience. Currently, registered voters can only obtain absentee ballots if they are unable to be in the polling place on Election Day due to illness, travel or religious reasons. By doing away with these restrictions, registered voters could apply for the ballots and vote without having to fgure out when or how to get to their polling place. As our world has been more fast-paced and as California residents are busier trying to hold on to their Jobs in this difficult economy, our voting system needs to catch up. If voting is made easier, more people will vote increasing our political articipation. The Democracy Index provided by the Ell-J also shows that the United States has a score of 7. 5 in functioning of government. This data ultimately corresponds to the score the U. S has in political participation. The United States, as a form of democracy utilizing the â€Å"First Past the Post†(FPTP or FPP) system and gerrymandering results in a government, would ultimately yield a relatively moderate two party system. Additionally, the United States Government doesnt function according to the will of the people. The United States Government as a representative government means that the representatives in its political office represent the people but function based on their own beliefs and opinions. Thirdly, the average person has no direct impact on who the president is. â€Å"That Privilege falls to the Electoral College, under the 23rd amendment of the constitution. â€Å"00Ultimately, this government â€Å"of the people, by the people, for the people†, fails to truly recognize the power and worth of those on the outskirts of society, those who can’t fend for themselves, those who don’t conform to he status quo, those who are not well off or better, and those who â€Å"fail to contribute† to society. Again, attempting to increase the voting rate will assist our ranking score for the functioning of government, as it will be more accurate toward what the people want. Over the past few years, American Democracy has been loosing its power. One of the main causes is that there is not enough political participation amongst its citizens. ‘As their responsibility our government has to find a way to facilitate the voting process for electorates and that way increasing our political participation that ill then establish a more democratic functioning of government. The best action to revitalizing democracy in the United States is to change the voting system itself – the method that determines how we cast our votes for candidates and how the winners are decided. Our current winner-take-all voting system is one of the least representative and least democratic of all forms of elections. Adopting a better voting system could go along ways toward enhancing the political power of average citizens, and this would help to blunt the influence of private economic power. How to cite Constitutional Law Paper, Essays

Tell-Tale Heart Essays (688 words) - , Term Papers

Tell-Tale Heart Tell-Tale Heart ?TRUE!--nervous ? very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad Edgar Allen Poe shows us the dark part of human kind. Conflict with in ones self, state of madness, and emotional break down all occur within this short story. The narrator of the story is a mad man that is haunted by his idea that the old man has an evil eye. There are two conflicts that occur with the story: internal and external. The internal conflict is the narrator's guilt over killing the old man forces him to believe that he hears the dead man's heart beating. ?I talked more quickly?more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased.?. Ones owns conscience can only take so much before the person breaks down. ?Oh God! What could I do? I foamed?I raved?I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased.? The external conflict is the eye itself; the narrator feels that the old man's eye is always watching him in turn makes him think he can read his mind. ?It was open?wide, wide open?and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness?all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones.? A madman can only take so much when he fixated on an eye. State of madness is very implicit in this case. The fact that the narrator was way too overly patient and dedicated to stalking the old man night after night, at midnight, seven days before he decides to commit his evil deed. Was obviously the act of a keen madman. ?Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust in! I moved it slowly?very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed.? The narrator keeps implying that he is very, very dreadfully nervous. ?I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.? This also gives us the reader the hint of him being mad. When ones actions that are thought out with knowing the harsh consequences are a key sign to madness. Basically what I think Edgar Allen Poe is trying to imply to us is that everyone holds a little madness within and subconsciously. We must fight the urge and accept it fully, to be excepted and considered normal. Because everyone's got to do it. The emotional feeling of the narrator are those of the depressed. He is neither shy or outgoing. He thinks he is skillful and not mad. ?If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body.? He states this because he is trying to persuade the reader into thinking he's smart therefore making the reader come up with the idea how could you be mad if your smart. He does not seem to be caring, yet he does state he loved the old man. ?Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man.? He is dishonest though for he wasn't going to tell the police about the dead body until his subconscious thoughts made him believe that they too heard the horrifying heart beat of the old man. Which caused his emotional break down. Ones own subconscious mind could create emotions that can persuade one to do deeds in which he/she never thought of. Either it be good or bad like the narrators feelings towards the old man's eye. Emotions are those not to be put aside or forgotten about. But should be dealt with and conditioned to a norm. Mind over matter. Poetry Essays

Middlde Range Theory Example

Middlde Range Theory Example Middlde Range Theory – Coursework Example Virginia Henderson’s Nursing Theory Virginia Henderson is among the pioneers in the establishment of the uniquenessof nursing. She gave 14 components of nursing which according to Basavanthappa (2007) and Sitzman and Eichelberger (2011) could be used to improve the health of an individual and therefore reduce illness. These include physiological components that encompass breathing normally; eating and drinking adequately; elimination of body wastes; movement and maintenance of desirable posture; sleep and rest; ability to select the suitable dress, dressing and undressing; maintenance of body temperature within the normal range through adjustment of clothing and modification of the environment; keeping the body well groomed and clean and protection of integument; and avoidance of environmental injuries and causing injuries to others. Psychological aspects in communication and learning include communication with others through expression of opinions, fears, needs or emotions; a nd learning, discovery and satisfaction of curiosity that results in health and normal development and use of health facilities as available. The sociological and moral component of this theory entails worshiping in accordance to one’s faith. Finally, the components that are sociologically inclined towards occupation and recreation include working with a sense of accomplishment; and playing or participation in different recreational activities. None of these components resemble and each would be infinitely satisfied by varied living patterns.Henderson’s theory significantly compares to that of Nightingale. The theories agree on how to care for a patient’s health, postulating the need to stabilize patients and optimize their comfort. The two theorists agree on the importance of promoting preventive care and healthy living through long term distribution of information to increase public awareness on self-care (Sitzman & Eichelberger, 2011).Indeed, this similarity fosters the appreciation of Henderson as the 20th Century Nightingale.ReferencesBasavanthappa, B. T. (2007). Nursing theories. New Delhi: Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers.Sitzman, K. & Eichelberger, L. W. (2011). Understanding the work of nurse theorists: A creative beginning (2nd ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Inner Speech - Definition and Uses

Inner Speech - Definition and Uses Inner speech is a form of internalized, self-directed dialogue: talking to oneself in silence. The phrase inner speech was used by Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky to describe a stage in language acquisition and the process of thought. In Vygotskys conception, speech began as a social medium and became internalized as inner speech, that is, verbalized thought (Katherine Nelson, Narratives From the Crib, 2006). See Examples and Observations, below. See also: DialogueInterior MonologueLanguageMemorySpeechTelegraphic Speech Examples and Observations: Dialogue launches language, the mind, but once it is launched we develop a new power, inner speech, and it is this that is indispensable for our further development, our thinking. . . . We are our language, it is often said; but our real language, our real identity, lies in inner speech, in that ceaseless stream and generation of meaning that constitutes the individual mind. It is through inner speech that the child develops his own concepts and meanings; it is through inner speech that he achieves his own identity; it is through inner speech, finally, that he constructs his own world. (Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices. University of California Press, 1989)If inner speech is marked by the intimate sense of my active thinking, is also quite concretely a thinking in a language. (Don Ihde, Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound. SUNY Press, 2007)Difficult as it is to study inner speech, there have been attempts to describe it: its said to be a shorthand version of real speech (as one researcher put it, a word in inner speech is the mere skin of a thought), and its very egocentric, not surprisingly, given that its a monologue, with the speaker and the audience being the same person.  (Jay Ingram, Talk Talk Talk: Decoding the Mysteries of Speech. Doubleday, 1992) Inner speech comprises both the inner voice we hear when reading and the muscle movements of the speech organs that often accompany reading and that are called subvocalizations. (Markus Bader, Prosody and Reanalysis. Reanalysis in Sentence Processing, ed. by Janet Dean Fodor and Fernanda Ferreira. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998) Vygotsky on Inner Speech Inner speech is not the interior aspect of external speechit is a function in itself. It still remains speech, i.e., thought connected with words. But while in external speech thought is embodied in words, in inner speech words die as they bring forth thought. Inner speech is to a large extent thinking in pure meanings. It is a dynamic, shifting, unstable thing, fluttering between word and thought, the two more or less stable, more or less firmly delineated components of verbal thought. (Lev Vygotsky, Thought, and Language, 1934. MIT Press, 1962) Linguistic Characteristics of Inner Speech Vygotsky identified a number of lexicogrammatical features which are foregrounded in both egocentric speech and inner speech. These features include omission of the subject, the foregrounding of predication, and a highly elliptical relationship between these forms and the speech situation (Vygotsky 1986 [1934]: 236). (Paul Thibault, Agency and Consciousness in Discourse: Self-Other Dynamics as a Complex System. Continuum, 2006)In inner speech the only grammatical rule at play is association through juxtaposition. Like inner speech, film uses a concrete language in which sense comes not from deduction but from the fullness of the individual attractions as qualified by the image which they help to develop. (J. Dudley Andrew, The Major Film Theories: An Introduction. Oxford University Press, 1976) Inner Speech and Writing Writing is part of the process of finding, developing, and articulating inner speech, that reservoir of internalized thought and language on which we depend for communication. (Gloria Gannaway, Transforming Mind: A Critical Cognitive Activity. Greenwood, 1994)Because it is a more deliberate act, writing engenders a different awareness of language use. Rivers (1987) related Vygotskys discussion of inner speech and language production to writing as discovery: As the writer expands his inner speech, he becomes conscious of things which he was not previously aware. In this way, he can write more than he realizes (p. 104). Zebroski (1994) noted that Luria looked at the reciprocal nature of writing and inner speech and described the functional and structural features of written speech, which inevitably lead to a significant development of inner speech. Because it delays the direct appearance of speech connections, inhibits them, and increases requirements for the preliminary, internal prep aration for the speech act, written speech produces a rich development for inner speech (p. 166).  (William M. Reynolds and Gloria Miller, eds., Handbook of Psychology: Educational Psychology. John Wiley, 2003)

Green acres seed company Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Green acres seed company - Assignment Example This is called the awareness stage which highly target audience to be reached rather than the aim of marketing in the websites which the visitors do not have interest in. Through marketing of Green acres seed Company using the modern technology of marketing, the company retargets those who visit the website thus keeping the products top of the mind. The company uses test messaging to convince the farmers about the seed company explaining the different varieties of seeds available with their prices. The market structures of Green acres seed Company is the seller concentration, the degree of buyer concentration, the brands differentiation and the condition of entry to the market. The company has adopted a high seller concentration which means that the seller supply is about 90% to make it available to those who want the seeds. Due to competitors, the company has adopted a pricing strategy to make sure that the products remain in the market despite competition in the market. For example green acres company has survival means in the market when there is price war, market decline or market saturation. Green acres seed Company has temporarily set a price which covers the cost when the prices of the seeds tend to be low so that the company can continue with the operation. The company provides products with low cost due to the market differentiation from the competitors, but the most important thing is good and high quality seeds that have a high germination percentage. high quality products makes the customer to consider green acres company products though people consider the most expensive products as high quality products (Kent 2003). Green Acres Company usually maximizes the quantity of the product this is because the company focuses on reducing long term costs. The approach is used because the company is well funded by the founders and the investors. Green Acres Company may also maximize quantity so as to maximize market

Violence Against Women (CASE) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Violence Against Women (CASE) - Essay Example The bystander program on violence against women emphasizes all members within the community play a role in ensuring violence against women does not occur. A bystander is the person who witnesses a situation and is neither the victim nor the perpetrator but in someway the person could make a difference if involved in the situation (Postmus, 2013). In many different cases, the bystander program has been found to prevent possible cases of different forms of possible violence. However, in prevention of violence against women, the bystander program has not produced effective results. Most cases of violence against women mainly occur at family level and therefore any bystander would find it difficult to into family matters. In most communities, the family setting recognizes the male as the head of the family and thus is some way justifies the m beating their wives (Davis, S. (2012). Despite this being a form of violence, which is illegal, the bystanders may find it difficult to interrupt or prevent it due the cultural justification in it and the respect for a family. Violence on women is often characterized by ill behavior and is seen as disciplinary action to the woman and hence it is difficult to differentiate between a violence case and intended disciplinary action on a wife (OToole, 2005). It is therefore in appropriate to consider a bystander program as a solution to curb violence on women. Bystander programs could be implemented effectively in other cases such as control of violence among students in a school. It could be effective in such as situation since all the people in the school are at an equal level. It could also be effective in a prevention of sexual violence in universities and college it could be effective in such cases since all the people belong to a similar level and sexual violence is easily identifiable. Various adjustments need to be made

Analysing Corruption and Organised Crime in Russia

Analysing Corruption and Organised Crime in Russia Corruption as will be examined, was nothing new in the post-Soviet economy for its perceived rise and that of organised crime had their origins in the Soviet era. In the Soviet Union private enterprise on an individual or business basis had officially not been allowed from when the New Economic Policy was abandoned in the 1920s and with the forced collectivization of agriculture during the 1930s. Under the Stalinist State the economy was planned and commanded by the Communist Party via the Soviet Union’s state structure. In theory the Soviet State controlled every aspect of the Soviet economy. It set prices; it controlled industrial outputs, banking services and foreign exchange rates. However, in practice there was a flourishing black market in luxury goods and foreign exchange rates before the political and economic reforms started by Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s. His twin policies of Glasnost and Perestroika, political openness and economic restructuring were intended to prolong the Soviet Union. Instead the Soviet Union would collapse leaving its successor states working towards democracy and capitalism whilst facing up to the problem of increasing corruption and organised crime. The level of corruption if not organised crime during the Soviet era might not be too easy to establish exactly. The Soviet authorities after all kept the true state of the economy hidden from the West even if its citizens experienced hardships and shortages. The leading members of the politburo had been the only ones with a realistic view of the economy. The liberalisation of the economy in all parts of the former Soviet Union since 1991 have generally led to an increase of corruption and organised crime. Clampdowns on organised crime and corruption have often been half hearted when they have been carried out both during and after the Soviet era. Explanations for this rise in corruption and organised crime will now be described and examined. Some of these causes pre-date the collapse of the Soviet Union whilst others emerged later. Black markets existed prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union often bringing consumers goods that were unavailable in the state-run shops, goods that were sometimes exchanged instead of sold to avoid breaking the law. Hand in hand with the black markets went corruption and bribery. Black marketers frequently resorted to bribing communist party officials, the police and the KGB or they in turn extorted money off the black marketers. The KGB sometimes recruited some of the black marketers to inform on their rivals and their customers. The more the Soviet economy faltered the faster the black-market grew, providing people with goods not available in the shops. Those marketers that did not bribe officials often found their homes or businesses raided or got put in jail, those that paid up could go about their business undisturbed. The Soviet leadership started to have concerns about economic stagnation, organised crime and to a lesser extent corruption in the early 1980s but none of the m seemed to understand the extent of the economic malaise. The long years of stagnation continued until despite the rapid deaths of three general secretaries of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) between 1982-1985. Leonid Brezhnev during his time in charge had done nothing to halt economic decline and in fact worsened it by accelerating the arms race with the United States and invading Afghanistan. It has been estimated that as much as 50% of the Soviet Union’s annual budges was spent on defence or related products and projects. However, that was money that the Soviet Union no longer had to spare. His immediate successor Yuri Andropov started a campaign against bribery and corruption that petered out with his death in 1984. When Gorbachev replaced Konstantin Chernenko a year later he pledged to reform the Soviet Union. Instead his policies would promote its collapse and lead to increased corruption and organised crime in the sixteen successor states. The problem with Stalinist economic planning was that it â€Å"created and perpetuated a shortage economy motivated only by harsh orders from the centre.† It kept most of the people equally poor except for those that found ways around the system. By the 1980s the idea of abandoning the communist command economy in favour of capitalism and liberal democracy gained ground not only in the Soviet Union but also in Central and Eastern Europe. For the reformers could look at the neo-liberal experience of the Thatcher and Reagan administrations, perhaps the devastating social and economic effects in parts of Latin America would have been more relevant. There was of course the example of the New Economic Policy that had allowed the Soviet economy to recover from the ravages of civil war, an attractive example to communists that wanted to reform the system but also for the non-communists that wished to replace it. There was one group of pro-capitalist economists that hoped to bring in a market system to Russia, they were the ‘young reformers’. Yeger Gaider whose family was amongst the elites of the Soviet nomenklatura ironically enough headed the young reformers. They were just looking for somebody to carry out their plan s and not power for themselves and would eventually team up with Boris Yeltsin a highly effective (when healthy) populist politician with only a limited understanding of economics. Alongside Yeltsin, they had the dream of dismantling communism. However, the way in which communism was dismantled across the former Soviet Union would contribute greatly to the rise of organised crime alongside the already high levels of corruption. In the first years of Gorbachev’s rule his government attempted to preserve the Soviet political system whilst reforming its economic system, little realising that these reforms would fail and thus contribute to the rise of corruption and organised crime as well as the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He wanted to make the system worktop its full capacity without moving to a capitalist economy or inducing economic suffering. The government attempted to increase productivity by reducing alcohol consumption and the sickness that was often connected to it, but he did not run an anti corruption campaign immediately. Gorbachev would have banned vodka but feared the ban would be circumvented by organised crime gangs, plus the tax revenues that kept the Soviet government solvent. One man who had started Ananta-corruption campaign was Boris Yeltsin who was the Moscow party boss until his sudden dismissal by Gorbachev during November 1987.Gorbachev believed he had removed his great est rival but had in fact made a very basic political blunder, as Yeltsin was no longer controllable and determined to avenge his fall from power. By 1989 it became clear that the Soviet economic system was unsustainable or beyond reforming and Gorbachev introduced some capitalist measures. Those measures included allowing small private businesses to operate from August 1990 and a series of de-regulations and privatisations between October 1990 and July 1991. Economic reforms brought increased opportunities to organised criminals and budding capitalist entrepreneurs, a distinction in the former Soviet Union that is not always clear. The sudden creations of small businesses increased chances for investments and money laundering or even to takeover privatised companies. Decades of communist economic and political rule left a legacy that was difficult to shake off immediately in the post-Soviet era. Yeltsin and his contemporaries found it difficult to see the world from outside of a communist perspective. The communist legacy of patronage, privileges, corruption and perks would contribute to the rise of corruption and organised cr ime in the post-Soviet era. As the system started to collapse across the Soviet Union law and order began to decline with it thus allowing increased opportunities for organised crime and corruption as well as increased nationalist and ethnic tensions.   The political disintegration of the Soviet Union went hand in hand with its economic disintegration and declining levels of law and order in all the successor republics. The end of the Soviet Union was hastened by the failure of the communist coup in August 1991. The Baltic States had already broke away from the Soviet Union and was already on their way to capitalist economies. Russian president Boris Yeltsin seeming to stand for the twin transition from communist state to liberal democracy and planned socialist economy to neo-liberal capitalism although this is not exactly what happened. Contrary to Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin had believed that the breakup of the Soviet Union could be a positive rather than a disastrous event although many of his Russian compatriots might not have agreed with him. For the other former republics, it was a case of independence at last. Perhaps those that took advantage of the break up through organised crime or corruption would have agreed with h im. The Yeltsin government at first enthusiastically backed rapid and radical reforms, radical economics carried out by a group of advisors dubbed the ‘the young reformers’. Russia and the other former republics of the Soviet Union had very primitive banking and financial systems that presented apparently ideal opportunities for Russian and foreign investors. Those acting as go-betweens in business deals could make small fortunes by doing so. The transition to capitalism offered the prospect of making millions, it also led to the increase in organised crime and corruption as gangsters threatened investors, businesses and often fought each other. The Russian and other governments seemed incapable of monitoring, containing or preventing that rise. The Yeltsin government was hampered in its efforts to control and administer the regions let alone fight the rise in crime because the remaining regional governors were by and large communist nomenklatura and apparatchiks and unwilling to do as Moscow commanded. These bureaucrats forged links with industrialists in their region providing basis for ongoing and future corruption. The bitter power struggles between President and Parliament during the 1992-1993 period distracted them from trying to solve the country’s problems and allowed the regions greater autonomy and the increasing number of organised crime gangs free rein across much of Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union. They also spent much time and effort trying to persuade the public the other side was more corrupt and had greater links to organised crime than they did. One deputy governor indicated the scale of corruption in the remoter parts of Siberia that to start â€Å"accompany you probably have to brib e forty bureaucrats.† Organised crime gangs used the decline in government control to organise protection rackets to fleece investors and small businesses. There was an alarming increase in violent crimes and murders as gangs competed for control of their victims and clients or punished those that would not pay for their dubious protection. The number of killings related to gang warfare escalated dramatically. Moscow and the newly renamed St Petersburg have been the centres of most of that gang warfare. Corruption was not merely confined to the Mafia gangs it also extended to the police, the armed forces and civil servants. In Russia traffic police were involved in robbing motorists also teaming up with local gangs to force motorists to hand over their cars, or to pay them fines for non-existent offences or face their cars being confiscated. Corruption and the buying and selling of anything and everything was so widespread that young female university students would aim to become hard currency call girls or the mistresses of oligarchs or wealthy businessmen, whilst jobless youths would advertise their services for contract killings. One ruthless organised crime gang even went as far as murdering car owners and disposing of their bodies to steal their cars. Organised crime and the number of crime gangs increased dramatically as the political elites spent more time arguing amongst each other rather than fighting crime and corruption. Nobody in the public or the media believed that Boris Yeltsin would succeed in rooting out organised crime and corruption, after all every single Soviet leader had promised to do the same since 1917. After all his only previous crack down on corruption and organised crime in Moscow had been stopped it its tracks by Gorbachev when he was sacked as the Moscow party boss. The official crime figures for 1992 give a strong indication of the deteriorating law and order situation. The number of murders had increased by 40%whilst there was an even larger increase in robbery up by 60%. The overall number of registered crimes, bearing in mind that many crimes remained unreported went up to 2.76 million. In fact, the contending elites accused each other of corruption to score points off each other whilst the public were not interested in their squabbles and the 3,000or so crime gangs carried on regardless. Of the newly private run business in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States those3,000 gangs were able to pocket perhaps as much as 40 % of the turnovers early as 1993. Corruption was never too far from the surface in the former Soviet Union. It should have not been a surprise therefore that corruption and organised crime would rise in the post-Soviet as they already headstrong foundations and connections to outside crime gangs. During the Soviet era if an individual knew or bribed the right officials they could get the best luxury items, property deals or their children into the finest schools or universities. So, nobody could doubt that there would be greater levels of corruption when the restraints of the Soviet system were removed. In fact, corruption dated back into the Imperial Russian past, were the civil service had been unsalaried but able to accept gifts or payments in kind. The CPSU may have claimed to be responsible for the leading role in society and the economy, some of its members took a leading role in the black market or for a small bribe get people things that would not normally be available. In Belarus the movement towards independence was given a new impetus byte desire to be rid of greedy and corrupt communist party leaders. The unravelling of the Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe gave an opportunity for the more entrepreneurial members of the withdrawing Soviet army to make their fortunes. The pickings could be rich for the Soviet army had large areas of land and housing to sell. When Gorbachev made a deal with the West German government to sell Soviet military bases in the former East Germany back to them most of the best pickings had already gone. The Soviet defence minister Dmitrii Yazov happily joined in the schemes that led to the disappearance of the Soviet army assets without a trace. Yazov may have enjoyed making money for himself but he was wholeheartedly against political and economic reform. He would be one of the main leaders of the August 1991 coup. After all, under the Soviet system the higher an individual’s position within the party, the KGB o r the armed forces they could expect greater share of the perks and the spoils. Just how much money the corrupt communist party members made may not beknown exactly, much of the evidence was destroyed just before the final failed coup of August 1991. Those party members that did not get into trouble following the coup could find themselves in a good position to make money in the brave new post -Soviet world. That was because they already knew how to operate in corrupt systems and some already had links with organised crime. For many of the small traders that operated largely illegally during the Soviet era the only real difference between the past and the post-Soviet present was whom they paid for the privilege of staying in business. Now they had to pay organised crime gangs to stay in business and to stay alive rather than bribe communist party officials or members of the KGB, or if they were unlucky they would have to pay them all. Corruption and organised crime increased in the post-Soviet era, but it had great potential during the Soviet era and the right c onditions would fuel a massive expansion. For much of the former Soviet Union these conditions were present in the early 1990s. Petty crime was rumoured to be rife amongst civil servants and state employees, for instance in 1993 the Russian Interior Ministry recorded 13,000 such crimes, that was thought to be the tip of the iceberg. It was estimated that virtually all shops paid protection and perhaps four fifths of businesses and financial institutes did the same. The organised crime gangs had a virtual free reign on their prospective victims, as the number of untainted police was inadequate even if they could find any brave or foolish enough to testify. The more successful entrepreneurs could hire bodyguards but that was not an option for the smaller traders who had to pay up or face the consequences. In Russia neither the transition to democracy and the switch to capitalist economy has developed as the Russians and those in the rest of the world that were interested hoped or expected. These transitions unintentionally led to increased corruption and organised crime. Through a combination of the collapse of the archaic economic system, assets stripping by the Russians that brought utilities at cheap prices, government failings and last but no means least corruption. Russia was in a worse economic position than the Soviet Union had been, as were most of the former Soviet republics. Inward foreign investment during the 1990s did not make up for the vast sums that left Russia of between $100 billion and $150 billion made by the oligarchs that asset stripped Russia’s industries and infra-structure and does not include any of the profits made the organised crime gangs. Foreign investors, the more sensible ones at least were put off the possibility of investing in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union by the high risk of their investment been ruined by having to pay bribes to officials and protection to crime gangs. It seems that the only people prospering in post-Soviet Russia are those that became nouveau riche by their investments or those that made their money less honestly through extortion or corruption. Poverty and unemployment that did not officially exist during the Soviet era increased alarmingly during the 1990s. Even if the poverty line is measured below a monthly income of less than $30 a month up to 40 million Russians appear to live in poverty. That is alarming for a country that has the largest part of the Soviet Union that had been a military superpower until1991. Economically Russia’s decline was remarkable for its severity, producing less than Belgium and barely a quarter more than Poland. In the immediate post-Soviet period the situation was more chaotic because all the former republics were still maintaining the old Soviet currency and printing money as if it was going out of fashion, adding to the inflationary consequences of ending price controls. The chaotic situation increased the ease in which organised crime gangs could operate in the former Soviet Union. Whilst the resulting hyperinflation (added to by the removal of price controls) meant that many more ordinary people had to find alternative methods of supplementing their incomes. Russia was not the slowest country to reform its economy or political institutions Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Belarus according to European Bank of Reconstruction and Development were amongst the least reformed and most poverty struck. In contrast the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia progressed well enough to be admitted in the European Union by 2004. The adoption of free market capitalism brought an end to queuing in empty shops and replaced it with full shops where most people could not afford to buy anything. Hence people were searching for legal or illegal means of boosting their incomes and thus more likely to become involved in corruption and bribery. Uneconomic factories were shut making millions unemployed. Under the Soviet system people had less money but there was better state provisions and prices were fixed so inflation was virtually non-existent. The Soviet system had given privileges to countless petty state workers and junior party members. They were known as apparatchiks, whilst high ranking officials and senior party members with better perks were known as nomenklatura. With the end of the Soviet system some of these apparatchiks and nomenklatura exchanged their privileges for money, those still in state employment that had remained honest now exchanged favours for bribes. Corruption increased during the post-Sovi et era simply out of economic necessity right across all the former Soviet Union as ordinary citizens and government officials found that they did not enough to live on. Throughout the former Soviet Union, the pace of economic liberalisation varied. By the middle of 1994 the Baltic States and Russia in terms of the total percentage of gross domestic product generated by the private sector of the economy were well ahead of the Asian republics, Belarus and Moldova. In Estonia and Latvia, it was 55%, in Russia and Lithuania50 % with Belarus, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan lagged far behind on only 15%. In post-Soviet Russia nomenklatura were better placed than most to survive the harsher economic climate particularly those that lived in regions such as Siberia found it harder to survive especially when state subsidies ended leaving food and fuel far more expensive than in the major cities. The collapse of communism cut off many of the remote industrial and mining areas from the central government leading to social and economic decay. Such neglect has allowed for the growth of organised crime and corruption as desperate people turn to drugs and alcohol. Drug and alcohol abuse leads to health problems or addiction. To counter some of th e incursions into those remote areas by crime gangs the Putin government once more restricted travel in to those areas. A factor that contributed to the rise of organised crime in the post-Soviet was the wide availability of weapons for organised crime gangs and individual gangsters or thugs to use. Weapons were often obtained from members of the armed forces. Military and naval personnel were increasingly eager to sell weapons to supplement their wages, assuming they had been paid on time. The Russian commanders are said to have done worse during the first Chechen war of 1994 -1996. They sold Grozny back to the rebels in August 1996 leading to the deaths of defenceless conscripts. Corruption within the Russian military seems to be endemic, which given its role in maintaining central government authority and internal security in some of the remoter regions of the Russian Federation certainly permitted and even encouraged organised crime to rise, for instance in Chechnya. During the second Chechen war that began in 1999 the local police observed the illicit trade between Russian soldiers and local blac k marketers. These soldiers would exchange boxes of ammunition for locally distilled vodka or locally grown cannabis with the tacit approval of their superior officers. Indeed, officers often accompanied their men when these exchanges took place. The black marketers then sell the ammunition to the Chechen fighters. Local police could intervene and arrest everybody, but they have either been told not to or bribed motto. The army was supposed to keep all the roads into Chechnya secure to prevent the rebels escaping or gaining supplies and money. However, the reporter Anna Politkovskaya was told â€Å"one person on foot must pay100 roubles; a light vehicle costs about 500-600 roubles†. Politkovskaya did not readily accept those claims until she successfully bribed the soldiers to get past the checkpoint. The greed and corruption of the army must have been counterproductive. They sold ammunition that was used by the Chechens and they allowed access to restricted areas to anybody who could have smuggled weapons in and people out. The corruption of the Russian armed forces in the area in and around Chechnya lowered the security and containment of Chechen fighters and contributed to the apparent ease in which rebels were able to take hostages in the Moscow theatre during October 2002. More horrifically the siege of a Beslan high school in September 2004 showed that the Russian military were incompetent as well as riddled with corruption. Gangsters did not always buy weapons; they could often steal weapons from poorly guarded or neglected military bases. Due to the Soviet Union having national service most of the organised crime gang members could already use weapons. Troops leaving the army could also consider employment as either bodyguard for the newly rich and the justifiably concerned business owners or joining the organised crime gangs themselves as thugs and assassins. Violent crime is probably not as prevalent as people in the West might believe, however crime gangs would have no qualms about settling accounts with intimidation, assault and murder. Some murders have shown that the crime gangs and contract killers are able to gain hold of sophisticated weapons such as rocket launchers to kill bodyguards as well as their bosses in St Petersburg. Gangs must be well connected as well as rich to acquire such weapons. The dramatic rise in the murder rate witnessed not only the deaths of politicians (three members of the Duma were shot dead in cold blood) but also businessmen and journalists. Business executives and more lowly bank employees could be and were at risk of being killed due tithe rise in corruption and organised crime. Not many gang members were afraid of being caught and convicted, for they were confident that even if the police did catch them that either the police or the courts could be persuaded to let them get away with it. In the period between 1992and 1995, the number of killed bank workers ranging from clerks to senior executives was 46. The most publicized killing was that of Pivanilide who the president of Rosbiznesbank had been. Kivelidi was poisoned in August 1995 for not complying with the demands of organised criminals. There are still a high number of deaths because of fighting between rival gangs still demonstrating that there are enough guns and money up for grabs to m ake the high risks of being killed seem worthwhile. Over 2,000 gang members are gunned down every year in gang wars in the Moscow region alone. Until the Putin presidency the situation in St Petersburg had been worse although Putin seems to want to clean up his home city. The difficulty and the danger of uncovering the true level of crimes being committed aided the rise in organised crime and corruption. With so many bureaucrats, police and politicians involved or thought to be involved in corruption much of the uncovering of crimes and evidence of corruption came from the press and journalists or even rarely independently minded politicians. For journalists it was dangerous to uncover and attempt to publish evidence and articles concerning organised crime gangs and the high levels of corruption. Considering the increasing control of the media by the state or by oligarchs whose own positions could be undermined by revelations of corruption or organised crime it has not always been easy for reporters to go public with evidence they have gathered. To illustrate the dangerous position journalists found themselves in, 36 were killed between January 1994and May 1995 throughout the former Soviet Union whilst doing their jobs and reporting on not only corrup tion and organised crime but also the conflict in Chechnya. The uncovering of evidence of the corruption and fraud within the Soviet army during its time in East Germany and before its departure appeared to be a major scope for the Murkowski Komsomolsk and its investigative journalist Dmitrii Kholod. For Kholod it proved one-story too far as a bomb blew up him and his office during October1994. Even television reporters and journalists were not immune from danger. Following his research into the corrupt or dishonest selling of television advertising Vladimir Listed was gunned down in March 1995before he could broadcast all his findings. At other times politicians, bureaucrats and business executives would inform or leak information about their rivals real or presumed links with organised crime and corruption for their own gain rather than in the public interest or to fight corruption itself. Whilst these bouts of accusations and counter accusations occupied the politicians and press attentions they occasionally removed the expendable politici ans and bureaucrats whilst leaving the level of overall corruption untouched. As noted below the Books affair would be used to force the resignations of some of the young reformers in 1999. Accusations of corruption would also be leaked to the press after an individual had lost the approval of either President Yeltsin or President Putin. The prime example of this were the accusations levelled against Boris Berezovskyafter he fell out with Putin, or more aptly when Putin regarded him as no longer useful to the Kremlin. Berezovsky is claimed to have stolen millions from his companies and state-run companies such as Aeroflot. All these events were from the early 1990s, so the Russian government had plenty of time to prove them or clear him. Berezovsky who went to exile in London has retaliated by campaigning against the Putin government’s increasing control of power. In Russia it appears that those involved in corruption or organised crime are relatively immune from arrest if they do not upset the Kremlin, or their punishment becomes politically expedient for the government. President Putin is arguably â€Å"searching for levers that will work †¦ to have in place a national authority that functions as normal governments do†. Corruption was a fact of life in the Soviet era and now seems even more endemic in the post-Soviet period; ordinary Soviet citizens were cynical about the financial honesty of their political masters and the higher-ranking communist party officials, a cynicism that continues with post-Soviet politicians and officials. Evidence of corruption and bribery would often be collected by the KGB and used if the individuals concerned fall out of favour senior party members, its successor still collects such information only now some its officers are more likely to sell sensitive information to the highest bidders. President Yeltsinonly renamed the KGB the FSB instead of abolishing it. He also retained control of the KGB records and evidence of the corruption they contained Timely uncovering of bribe taking and corruption have often been used to discredit rivals and justify the dismissal of ministers and officials. Therefore, presumably there is usually enough evidence to act against many of t hose involved in corruption or organised crime but not always the political will or judicial authority to do so. Many Russians believe that most if not all government ministers and officials are corrupt and susceptible to bribes. Officials are willing to risk public safety and even national security as well as their reputations for the sake of bribes. Allegations and counter allegations of corruption were used in the 1990s during the power struggle between President Yeltsin and hard-liners such as Rosko and Khasbulatov. Corruption both in the Soviet era and afterwards existed and increased because the majority of those accepting bribes or using their position for gain position or cash believed that they would not get caught. Even if they did get caught the rate of convictions were not that high. Soviet era clampdowns on corruption under Andropov and Gorbachev only caught small fry and the same could apply during the post-Soviet era. The only notable high ranking communist to be convicted for corruption was Yuri Churbanov in 1988. Churbanov’s father in law was the late Leonid Brezhnev, the one-time Soviet leader and General Secretar Analysing Corruption and Organised Crime in Russia Analysing Corruption and Organised Crime in Russia Corruption as will be examined, was nothing new in the post-Soviet economy for its perceived rise and that of organised crime had their origins in the Soviet era. In the Soviet Union private enterprise on an individual or business basis had officially not been allowed from when the New Economic Policy was abandoned in the 1920s and with the forced collectivization of agriculture during the 1930s. Under the Stalinist State the economy was planned and commanded by the Communist Party via the Soviet Union’s state structure. In theory the Soviet State controlled every aspect of the Soviet economy. It set prices; it controlled industrial outputs, banking services and foreign exchange rates. However, in practice there was a flourishing black market in luxury goods and foreign exchange rates before the political and economic reforms started by Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s. His twin policies of Glasnost and Perestroika, political openness and economic restructuring were intended to prolong the Soviet Union. Instead the Soviet Union would collapse leaving its successor states working towards democracy and capitalism whilst facing up to the problem of increasing corruption and organised crime. The level of corruption if not organised crime during the Soviet era might not be too easy to establish exactly. The Soviet authorities after all kept the true state of the economy hidden from the West even if its citizens experienced hardships and shortages. The leading members of the politburo had been the only ones with a realistic view of the economy. The liberalisation of the economy in all parts of the former Soviet Union since 1991 have generally led to an increase of corruption and organised crime. Clampdowns on organised crime and corruption have often been half hearted when they have been carried out both during and after the Soviet era. Explanations for this rise in corruption and organised crime will now be described and examined. Some of these causes pre-date the collapse of the Soviet Union whilst others emerged later. Black markets existed prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union often bringing consumers goods that were unavailable in the state-run shops, goods that were sometimes exchanged instead of sold to avoid breaking the law. Hand in hand with the black markets went corruption and bribery. Black marketers frequently resorted to bribing communist party officials, the police and the KGB or they in turn extorted money off the black marketers. The KGB sometimes recruited some of the black marketers to inform on their rivals and their customers. The more the Soviet economy faltered the faster the black-market grew, providing people with goods not available in the shops. Those marketers that did not bribe officials often found their homes or businesses raided or got put in jail, those that paid up could go about their business undisturbed. The Soviet leadership started to have concerns about economic stagnation, organised crime and to a lesser extent corruption in the early 1980s but none of the m seemed to understand the extent of the economic malaise. The long years of stagnation continued until despite the rapid deaths of three general secretaries of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) between 1982-1985. Leonid Brezhnev during his time in charge had done nothing to halt economic decline and in fact worsened it by accelerating the arms race with the United States and invading Afghanistan. It has been estimated that as much as 50% of the Soviet Union’s annual budges was spent on defence or related products and projects. However, that was money that the Soviet Union no longer had to spare. His immediate successor Yuri Andropov started a campaign against bribery and corruption that petered out with his death in 1984. When Gorbachev replaced Konstantin Chernenko a year later he pledged to reform the Soviet Union. Instead his policies would promote its collapse and lead to increased corruption and organised crime in the sixteen successor states. The problem with Stalinist economic planning was that it â€Å"created and perpetuated a shortage economy motivated only by harsh orders from the centre.† It kept most of the people equally poor except for those that found ways around the system. By the 1980s the idea of abandoning the communist command economy in favour of capitalism and liberal democracy gained ground not only in the Soviet Union but also in Central and Eastern Europe. For the reformers could look at the neo-liberal experience of the Thatcher and Reagan administrations, perhaps the devastating social and economic effects in parts of Latin America would have been more relevant. There was of course the example of the New Economic Policy that had allowed the Soviet economy to recover from the ravages of civil war, an attractive example to communists that wanted to reform the system but also for the non-communists that wished to replace it. There was one group of pro-capitalist economists that hoped to bring in a market system to Russia, they were the ‘young reformers’. Yeger Gaider whose family was amongst the elites of the Soviet nomenklatura ironically enough headed the young reformers. They were just looking for somebody to carry out their plan s and not power for themselves and would eventually team up with Boris Yeltsin a highly effective (when healthy) populist politician with only a limited understanding of economics. Alongside Yeltsin, they had the dream of dismantling communism. However, the way in which communism was dismantled across the former Soviet Union would contribute greatly to the rise of organised crime alongside the already high levels of corruption. In the first years of Gorbachev’s rule his government attempted to preserve the Soviet political system whilst reforming its economic system, little realising that these reforms would fail and thus contribute to the rise of corruption and organised crime as well as the disintegration of the Soviet Union. He wanted to make the system worktop its full capacity without moving to a capitalist economy or inducing economic suffering. The government attempted to increase productivity by reducing alcohol consumption and the sickness that was often connected to it, but he did not run an anti corruption campaign immediately. Gorbachev would have banned vodka but feared the ban would be circumvented by organised crime gangs, plus the tax revenues that kept the Soviet government solvent. One man who had started Ananta-corruption campaign was Boris Yeltsin who was the Moscow party boss until his sudden dismissal by Gorbachev during November 1987.Gorbachev believed he had removed his great est rival but had in fact made a very basic political blunder, as Yeltsin was no longer controllable and determined to avenge his fall from power. By 1989 it became clear that the Soviet economic system was unsustainable or beyond reforming and Gorbachev introduced some capitalist measures. Those measures included allowing small private businesses to operate from August 1990 and a series of de-regulations and privatisations between October 1990 and July 1991. Economic reforms brought increased opportunities to organised criminals and budding capitalist entrepreneurs, a distinction in the former Soviet Union that is not always clear. The sudden creations of small businesses increased chances for investments and money laundering or even to takeover privatised companies. Decades of communist economic and political rule left a legacy that was difficult to shake off immediately in the post-Soviet era. Yeltsin and his contemporaries found it difficult to see the world from outside of a communist perspective. The communist legacy of patronage, privileges, corruption and perks would contribute to the rise of corruption and organised cr ime in the post-Soviet era. As the system started to collapse across the Soviet Union law and order began to decline with it thus allowing increased opportunities for organised crime and corruption as well as increased nationalist and ethnic tensions.   The political disintegration of the Soviet Union went hand in hand with its economic disintegration and declining levels of law and order in all the successor republics. The end of the Soviet Union was hastened by the failure of the communist coup in August 1991. The Baltic States had already broke away from the Soviet Union and was already on their way to capitalist economies. Russian president Boris Yeltsin seeming to stand for the twin transition from communist state to liberal democracy and planned socialist economy to neo-liberal capitalism although this is not exactly what happened. Contrary to Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin had believed that the breakup of the Soviet Union could be a positive rather than a disastrous event although many of his Russian compatriots might not have agreed with him. For the other former republics, it was a case of independence at last. Perhaps those that took advantage of the break up through organised crime or corruption would have agreed with h im. The Yeltsin government at first enthusiastically backed rapid and radical reforms, radical economics carried out by a group of advisors dubbed the ‘the young reformers’. Russia and the other former republics of the Soviet Union had very primitive banking and financial systems that presented apparently ideal opportunities for Russian and foreign investors. Those acting as go-betweens in business deals could make small fortunes by doing so. The transition to capitalism offered the prospect of making millions, it also led to the increase in organised crime and corruption as gangsters threatened investors, businesses and often fought each other. The Russian and other governments seemed incapable of monitoring, containing or preventing that rise. The Yeltsin government was hampered in its efforts to control and administer the regions let alone fight the rise in crime because the remaining regional governors were by and large communist nomenklatura and apparatchiks and unwilling to do as Moscow commanded. These bureaucrats forged links with industrialists in their region providing basis for ongoing and future corruption. The bitter power struggles between President and Parliament during the 1992-1993 period distracted them from trying to solve the country’s problems and allowed the regions greater autonomy and the increasing number of organised crime gangs free rein across much of Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union. They also spent much time and effort trying to persuade the public the other side was more corrupt and had greater links to organised crime than they did. One deputy governor indicated the scale of corruption in the remoter parts of Siberia that to start â€Å"accompany you probably have to brib e forty bureaucrats.† Organised crime gangs used the decline in government control to organise protection rackets to fleece investors and small businesses. There was an alarming increase in violent crimes and murders as gangs competed for control of their victims and clients or punished those that would not pay for their dubious protection. The number of killings related to gang warfare escalated dramatically. Moscow and the newly renamed St Petersburg have been the centres of most of that gang warfare. Corruption was not merely confined to the Mafia gangs it also extended to the police, the armed forces and civil servants. In Russia traffic police were involved in robbing motorists also teaming up with local gangs to force motorists to hand over their cars, or to pay them fines for non-existent offences or face their cars being confiscated. Corruption and the buying and selling of anything and everything was so widespread that young female university students would aim to become hard currency call girls or the mistresses of oligarchs or wealthy businessmen, whilst jobless youths would advertise their services for contract killings. One ruthless organised crime gang even went as far as murdering car owners and disposing of their bodies to steal their cars. Organised crime and the number of crime gangs increased dramatically as the political elites spent more time arguing amongst each other rather than fighting crime and corruption. Nobody in the public or the media believed that Boris Yeltsin would succeed in rooting out organised crime and corruption, after all every single Soviet leader had promised to do the same since 1917. After all his only previous crack down on corruption and organised crime in Moscow had been stopped it its tracks by Gorbachev when he was sacked as the Moscow party boss. The official crime figures for 1992 give a strong indication of the deteriorating law and order situation. The number of murders had increased by 40%whilst there was an even larger increase in robbery up by 60%. The overall number of registered crimes, bearing in mind that many crimes remained unreported went up to 2.76 million. In fact, the contending elites accused each other of corruption to score points off each other whilst the public were not interested in their squabbles and the 3,000or so crime gangs carried on regardless. Of the newly private run business in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States those3,000 gangs were able to pocket perhaps as much as 40 % of the turnovers early as 1993. Corruption was never too far from the surface in the former Soviet Union. It should have not been a surprise therefore that corruption and organised crime would rise in the post-Soviet as they already headstrong foundations and connections to outside crime gangs. During the Soviet era if an individual knew or bribed the right officials they could get the best luxury items, property deals or their children into the finest schools or universities. So, nobody could doubt that there would be greater levels of corruption when the restraints of the Soviet system were removed. In fact, corruption dated back into the Imperial Russian past, were the civil service had been unsalaried but able to accept gifts or payments in kind. The CPSU may have claimed to be responsible for the leading role in society and the economy, some of its members took a leading role in the black market or for a small bribe get people things that would not normally be available. In Belarus the movement towards independence was given a new impetus byte desire to be rid of greedy and corrupt communist party leaders. The unravelling of the Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe gave an opportunity for the more entrepreneurial members of the withdrawing Soviet army to make their fortunes. The pickings could be rich for the Soviet army had large areas of land and housing to sell. When Gorbachev made a deal with the West German government to sell Soviet military bases in the former East Germany back to them most of the best pickings had already gone. The Soviet defence minister Dmitrii Yazov happily joined in the schemes that led to the disappearance of the Soviet army assets without a trace. Yazov may have enjoyed making money for himself but he was wholeheartedly against political and economic reform. He would be one of the main leaders of the August 1991 coup. After all, under the Soviet system the higher an individual’s position within the party, the KGB o r the armed forces they could expect greater share of the perks and the spoils. Just how much money the corrupt communist party members made may not beknown exactly, much of the evidence was destroyed just before the final failed coup of August 1991. Those party members that did not get into trouble following the coup could find themselves in a good position to make money in the brave new post -Soviet world. That was because they already knew how to operate in corrupt systems and some already had links with organised crime. For many of the small traders that operated largely illegally during the Soviet era the only real difference between the past and the post-Soviet present was whom they paid for the privilege of staying in business. Now they had to pay organised crime gangs to stay in business and to stay alive rather than bribe communist party officials or members of the KGB, or if they were unlucky they would have to pay them all. Corruption and organised crime increased in the post-Soviet era, but it had great potential during the Soviet era and the right c onditions would fuel a massive expansion. For much of the former Soviet Union these conditions were present in the early 1990s. Petty crime was rumoured to be rife amongst civil servants and state employees, for instance in 1993 the Russian Interior Ministry recorded 13,000 such crimes, that was thought to be the tip of the iceberg. It was estimated that virtually all shops paid protection and perhaps four fifths of businesses and financial institutes did the same. The organised crime gangs had a virtual free reign on their prospective victims, as the number of untainted police was inadequate even if they could find any brave or foolish enough to testify. The more successful entrepreneurs could hire bodyguards but that was not an option for the smaller traders who had to pay up or face the consequences. In Russia neither the transition to democracy and the switch to capitalist economy has developed as the Russians and those in the rest of the world that were interested hoped or expected. These transitions unintentionally led to increased corruption and organised crime. Through a combination of the collapse of the archaic economic system, assets stripping by the Russians that brought utilities at cheap prices, government failings and last but no means least corruption. Russia was in a worse economic position than the Soviet Union had been, as were most of the former Soviet republics. Inward foreign investment during the 1990s did not make up for the vast sums that left Russia of between $100 billion and $150 billion made by the oligarchs that asset stripped Russia’s industries and infra-structure and does not include any of the profits made the organised crime gangs. Foreign investors, the more sensible ones at least were put off the possibility of investing in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union by the high risk of their investment been ruined by having to pay bribes to officials and protection to crime gangs. It seems that the only people prospering in post-Soviet Russia are those that became nouveau riche by their investments or those that made their money less honestly through extortion or corruption. Poverty and unemployment that did not officially exist during the Soviet era increased alarmingly during the 1990s. Even if the poverty line is measured below a monthly income of less than $30 a month up to 40 million Russians appear to live in poverty. That is alarming for a country that has the largest part of the Soviet Union that had been a military superpower until1991. Economically Russia’s decline was remarkable for its severity, producing less than Belgium and barely a quarter more than Poland. In the immediate post-Soviet period the situation was more chaotic because all the former republics were still maintaining the old Soviet currency and printing money as if it was going out of fashion, adding to the inflationary consequences of ending price controls. The chaotic situation increased the ease in which organised crime gangs could operate in the former Soviet Union. Whilst the resulting hyperinflation (added to by the removal of price controls) meant that many more ordinary people had to find alternative methods of supplementing their incomes. Russia was not the slowest country to reform its economy or political institutions Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Belarus according to European Bank of Reconstruction and Development were amongst the least reformed and most poverty struck. In contrast the Baltic States of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia progressed well enough to be admitted in the European Union by 2004. The adoption of free market capitalism brought an end to queuing in empty shops and replaced it with full shops where most people could not afford to buy anything. Hence people were searching for legal or illegal means of boosting their incomes and thus more likely to become involved in corruption and bribery. Uneconomic factories were shut making millions unemployed. Under the Soviet system people had less money but there was better state provisions and prices were fixed so inflation was virtually non-existent. The Soviet system had given privileges to countless petty state workers and junior party members. They were known as apparatchiks, whilst high ranking officials and senior party members with better perks were known as nomenklatura. With the end of the Soviet system some of these apparatchiks and nomenklatura exchanged their privileges for money, those still in state employment that had remained honest now exchanged favours for bribes. Corruption increased during the post-Sovi et era simply out of economic necessity right across all the former Soviet Union as ordinary citizens and government officials found that they did not enough to live on. Throughout the former Soviet Union, the pace of economic liberalisation varied. By the middle of 1994 the Baltic States and Russia in terms of the total percentage of gross domestic product generated by the private sector of the economy were well ahead of the Asian republics, Belarus and Moldova. In Estonia and Latvia, it was 55%, in Russia and Lithuania50 % with Belarus, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan lagged far behind on only 15%. In post-Soviet Russia nomenklatura were better placed than most to survive the harsher economic climate particularly those that lived in regions such as Siberia found it harder to survive especially when state subsidies ended leaving food and fuel far more expensive than in the major cities. The collapse of communism cut off many of the remote industrial and mining areas from the central government leading to social and economic decay. Such neglect has allowed for the growth of organised crime and corruption as desperate people turn to drugs and alcohol. Drug and alcohol abuse leads to health problems or addiction. To counter some of th e incursions into those remote areas by crime gangs the Putin government once more restricted travel in to those areas. A factor that contributed to the rise of organised crime in the post-Soviet was the wide availability of weapons for organised crime gangs and individual gangsters or thugs to use. Weapons were often obtained from members of the armed forces. Military and naval personnel were increasingly eager to sell weapons to supplement their wages, assuming they had been paid on time. The Russian commanders are said to have done worse during the first Chechen war of 1994 -1996. They sold Grozny back to the rebels in August 1996 leading to the deaths of defenceless conscripts. Corruption within the Russian military seems to be endemic, which given its role in maintaining central government authority and internal security in some of the remoter regions of the Russian Federation certainly permitted and even encouraged organised crime to rise, for instance in Chechnya. During the second Chechen war that began in 1999 the local police observed the illicit trade between Russian soldiers and local blac k marketers. These soldiers would exchange boxes of ammunition for locally distilled vodka or locally grown cannabis with the tacit approval of their superior officers. Indeed, officers often accompanied their men when these exchanges took place. The black marketers then sell the ammunition to the Chechen fighters. Local police could intervene and arrest everybody, but they have either been told not to or bribed motto. The army was supposed to keep all the roads into Chechnya secure to prevent the rebels escaping or gaining supplies and money. However, the reporter Anna Politkovskaya was told â€Å"one person on foot must pay100 roubles; a light vehicle costs about 500-600 roubles†. Politkovskaya did not readily accept those claims until she successfully bribed the soldiers to get past the checkpoint. The greed and corruption of the army must have been counterproductive. They sold ammunition that was used by the Chechens and they allowed access to restricted areas to anybody who could have smuggled weapons in and people out. The corruption of the Russian armed forces in the area in and around Chechnya lowered the security and containment of Chechen fighters and contributed to the apparent ease in which rebels were able to take hostages in the Moscow theatre during October 2002. More horrifically the siege of a Beslan high school in September 2004 showed that the Russian military were incompetent as well as riddled with corruption. Gangsters did not always buy weapons; they could often steal weapons from poorly guarded or neglected military bases. Due to the Soviet Union having national service most of the organised crime gang members could already use weapons. Troops leaving the army could also consider employment as either bodyguard for the newly rich and the justifiably concerned business owners or joining the organised crime gangs themselves as thugs and assassins. Violent crime is probably not as prevalent as people in the West might believe, however crime gangs would have no qualms about settling accounts with intimidation, assault and murder. Some murders have shown that the crime gangs and contract killers are able to gain hold of sophisticated weapons such as rocket launchers to kill bodyguards as well as their bosses in St Petersburg. Gangs must be well connected as well as rich to acquire such weapons. The dramatic rise in the murder rate witnessed not only the deaths of politicians (three members of the Duma were shot dead in cold blood) but also businessmen and journalists. Business executives and more lowly bank employees could be and were at risk of being killed due tithe rise in corruption and organised crime. Not many gang members were afraid of being caught and convicted, for they were confident that even if the police did catch them that either the police or the courts could be persuaded to let them get away with it. In the period between 1992and 1995, the number of killed bank workers ranging from clerks to senior executives was 46. The most publicized killing was that of Pivanilide who the president of Rosbiznesbank had been. Kivelidi was poisoned in August 1995 for not complying with the demands of organised criminals. There are still a high number of deaths because of fighting between rival gangs still demonstrating that there are enough guns and money up for grabs to m ake the high risks of being killed seem worthwhile. Over 2,000 gang members are gunned down every year in gang wars in the Moscow region alone. Until the Putin presidency the situation in St Petersburg had been worse although Putin seems to want to clean up his home city. The difficulty and the danger of uncovering the true level of crimes being committed aided the rise in organised crime and corruption. With so many bureaucrats, police and politicians involved or thought to be involved in corruption much of the uncovering of crimes and evidence of corruption came from the press and journalists or even rarely independently minded politicians. For journalists it was dangerous to uncover and attempt to publish evidence and articles concerning organised crime gangs and the high levels of corruption. Considering the increasing control of the media by the state or by oligarchs whose own positions could be undermined by revelations of corruption or organised crime it has not always been easy for reporters to go public with evidence they have gathered. To illustrate the dangerous position journalists found themselves in, 36 were killed between January 1994and May 1995 throughout the former Soviet Union whilst doing their jobs and reporting on not only corrup tion and organised crime but also the conflict in Chechnya. The uncovering of evidence of the corruption and fraud within the Soviet army during its time in East Germany and before its departure appeared to be a major scope for the Murkowski Komsomolsk and its investigative journalist Dmitrii Kholod. For Kholod it proved one-story too far as a bomb blew up him and his office during October1994. Even television reporters and journalists were not immune from danger. Following his research into the corrupt or dishonest selling of television advertising Vladimir Listed was gunned down in March 1995before he could broadcast all his findings. At other times politicians, bureaucrats and business executives would inform or leak information about their rivals real or presumed links with organised crime and corruption for their own gain rather than in the public interest or to fight corruption itself. Whilst these bouts of accusations and counter accusations occupied the politicians and press attentions they occasionally removed the expendable politici ans and bureaucrats whilst leaving the level of overall corruption untouched. As noted below the Books affair would be used to force the resignations of some of the young reformers in 1999. Accusations of corruption would also be leaked to the press after an individual had lost the approval of either President Yeltsin or President Putin. The prime example of this were the accusations levelled against Boris Berezovskyafter he fell out with Putin, or more aptly when Putin regarded him as no longer useful to the Kremlin. Berezovsky is claimed to have stolen millions from his companies and state-run companies such as Aeroflot. All these events were from the early 1990s, so the Russian government had plenty of time to prove them or clear him. Berezovsky who went to exile in London has retaliated by campaigning against the Putin government’s increasing control of power. In Russia it appears that those involved in corruption or organised crime are relatively immune from arrest if they do not upset the Kremlin, or their punishment becomes politically expedient for the government. President Putin is arguably â€Å"searching for levers that will work †¦ to have in place a national authority that functions as normal governments do†. Corruption was a fact of life in the Soviet era and now seems even more endemic in the post-Soviet period; ordinary Soviet citizens were cynical about the financial honesty of their political masters and the higher-ranking communist party officials, a cynicism that continues with post-Soviet politicians and officials. Evidence of corruption and bribery would often be collected by the KGB and used if the individuals concerned fall out of favour senior party members, its successor still collects such information only now some its officers are more likely to sell sensitive information to the highest bidders. President Yeltsinonly renamed the KGB the FSB instead of abolishing it. He also retained control of the KGB records and evidence of the corruption they contained Timely uncovering of bribe taking and corruption have often been used to discredit rivals and justify the dismissal of ministers and officials. Therefore, presumably there is usually enough evidence to act against many of t hose involved in corruption or organised crime but not always the political will or judicial authority to do so. Many Russians believe that most if not all government ministers and officials are corrupt and susceptible to bribes. Officials are willing to risk public safety and even national security as well as their reputations for the sake of bribes. Allegations and counter allegations of corruption were used in the 1990s during the power struggle between President Yeltsin and hard-liners such as Rosko and Khasbulatov. Corruption both in the Soviet era and afterwards existed and increased because the majority of those accepting bribes or using their position for gain position or cash believed that they would not get caught. Even if they did get caught the rate of convictions were not that high. Soviet era clampdowns on corruption under Andropov and Gorbachev only caught small fry and the same could apply during the post-Soviet era. The only notable high ranking communist to be convicted for corruption was Yuri Churbanov in 1988. Churbanov’s father in law was the late Leonid Brezhnev, the one-time Soviet leader and General Secretar