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IlyaShpitser comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (7th thread, December 2014) - LessWrong
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This is a great question, I think about this a lot too. My intuitions are: a bit of reaction, e.g. getting in touch with the glorious past. This might work w/ e.g. Poland/Lithuania, may work even on Russia, if Russia remembers how the Novgorod republic worked. But Russia is a hard nut to crack.
But yes once there is a society-wide defection norm, it is hard to get out of.
Isn't that what Putin is doing? I am not sure this is a great idea. The past glories tend to be associated with nationalistic wars.
Another issue is what would unfucking entail -- turning East Europeans into Scandinavians? National cultural characteristics tend to be pretty persistent :-/ Otherwise, the canonical answer seems to be a long period of civil society, rule of law, etc. I am not holding my breath.
Russia is a super interesting special case. An interesting alternative history to ponder, re: Russia, is what would have happened had Novgorod predominated and not Moskva. Novgorod was sort of "the Lowlands of the East" in terms of the way they did things. Moskva was quite culturally nasty, and they got ahead by being basically the tax collectors for the Mongols.
One solution to this is to develop, through force if necessary, a small group of people where cooperation is enforced, then expand that group. For example, anarchy advances to despotism when a single powerful despot dominates and prevents anyone but him from using force. City-states advance to empire when a single city (e.g. Rome) conquers them and forces cooperating within its borders (Pax Romana). The analogy might be for a rich, powerful Russian with a clean reputation to make lots of friends who also have a clean reputation and go found a city somewhere in unincorporated Russian land with an able, honest police force and strongly enforced cooperation norms. Of course, in this age you win with industry, so maybe you'd also want lots of smart people starting software companies.
(Or why start it on Russian land, even? Russian is one of the coldest places on Earth, right? Is just moving everyone who doesn't like corruption out of Russia a viable solution?)
Are there anonymous online forums where Russians can discuss corruption?
It is, and is in fact what happened once the Iron Curtain fell. (This is an oversimplification, obviously).
Are you referring to the collectivization of agriculture in Russia? X-D
Ain't no such animal.
Anonymity is on the speaker's end, not on the forums end. But you might be interested in Alexei Navalny who is politically active on the anti-corruption platform.