This week´s issue of The Citizen addresses the issue of crime in Russia - its causes, development and possible approaches to dealing with the problem.

The Soviet Union had a relatively low crime regard (if one disregards the black market), even taking into account the discrepancy between official figures issued by the government and the actual ones. This was in part because the Union dealt with offenders in a very harsh manner and in part because the generally low and equal distribution of wealth made larceny on a grand scale somewhat pointless. Now, however, rule from above by the fist has yet to be replaced by rule of law, or indeed by much of anything else.

Whenever a Western analyst presents his or her diagnosis of Russia´s ills, one can be pretty sure that lack of the "rule of law" will be somewhere on the list of undesirables. (China, which does not have much of a rule of law either, also has the fastest-growing economy in the world - but then money laundering in the People´s Republic is punishable by death.) When one gets through all the tired moralizing and cliche-mongering that often accompanies these analyses, the fact remains that one of Russia´s chief problems at present is a lack of an impartial administration of laws.

No country can boast a completely impartial judicial system. Corruption scandals and flagrant violations of the law by the rich and influential are an unfortunate part of every society. But the arbitrariness of Russia´s system is almost in a class by itself among developed countries.

Lack of such a level playing field skews society away from anything approaching stability and "normalcy," two things Russia, despite the current stabilization under Putin, surely needs to see ensured by something more than just high oil prices and marginalization of power factions in the Duma.