I’ve lived in a truly corrupt country – that’s why I know Britain isn’t one

THIS is not a corrupt country. Corruption exists, and often it is driven much more by friendship than by money. I have little doubt that we will become much more corrupt in the years to come because the forces that restrain it are growing weaker.

But it would be very silly if we tried to decide our political future on the basis that one of the big parties was more corrupt than the other.

Both of those parties are terrible, but corruption is not really the problem. In fact accusations of corruption against your opponents are incessant in truly corrupt countries, such as modern China. But the corruption continues.

I know Britain is not corrupt because I lived in the Soviet Union, which was corrupt.

People seem to think that modern Russia, with its oligarchs and grotesque billionaires, began when Communism fell. On the contrary, it arose out of the Communist system, where huge blocks of unchallenged power flourished untouched by weak and servile media, and unrestrained by equally weak and servile courts.

This was everywhere. At the very top, the elite lived in secret luxury concealed from the people. In some parts of the USSR that elite could enrich itself through control of major industries.

When the regime finally collapsed, open gangsterism broke out to get control of the assets the Communist Party had once controlled. But almost every part of life was oiled and greased by bribery.

If you wanted a decent flat, you paid a bribe to get it. If you wanted your dentist to use anaesthetic, you paid a bribe to get it. Because money was little use, the bribes often took the shape of ‘gifts’, ranging from a video-recorder to a bottle of brandy. At the most basic level, you could not get into a restaurant without bribing the doorman, or get served without bribing the waiter. If the traffic police stopped you, usually for an imaginary offence, it was advisable to hand the officer a ten-rouble note (in those days the normal Soviet salary was about 350 roubles a month) folded into your driving licence. Foreigners paid more. And so on.

ISTARTED by resolving I would not do these things. I found very quickly that I could neither live nor work without becoming part of it. That is corruption. It corrupts everyone all the time. If you want to see this sort of thing at its most monstrous level, then look at the admission by the former Afghan finance minister Khalid Payenda, who now says that corrupt officials created ‘ghost soldiers’ who made up most of the 300,000 troops and police on the government’s books – so generals could trouser their wages.

That is why the Afghan Army vanished so totally. It never truly existed.

We have nothing like this here. Most people do their jobs honestly and without trying to extort bribes. Be very grateful for it.