Radishchev's Hundred‐Headed Monster Lives! The Role of the Bureaucrat Symbol in State‐Society Relations in Russia

Abstract

Q kJince the time of Catherine the Great, the bureaucrat has evolved as a major symbol in Russian culture, eventually reaching iconic stature as the hundred-headed monster.1 This article discusses the role of that symbol in shaping Russian society's beliefs about, and interactions with, the bureaucratic state. Despite the fact that bureaucracy is recognized as a central problem in post-Soviet Russian politics and state-society relations, the literature on it has been relatively sparse.2 This paucity reflects the low priority Boris Yeltsin's administration assigned to bureaucratic reform, the relative lack of interest of academics and policymakers given the exciting transitions taking place in Russia's political and economic systems in the post-Soviet period, and the fact that bureaucracy is a problem that cuts across political systems?from tsarist origins through the Soviet era to post-Soviet Russia. Interest in the bureaucracy problem increased somewhat during Vladimir Putin's presidency because of his efforts at bureaucratic reform. The new interest is reflected in literature that has focused either on the structure and composition of the bureaucracy and various proposals for reform, or on the corruption and clientilism associated with