This article examines the level of corruption in Chelyabinsk Oblast, one of the largest regions of Russia, in the 1990s when this phenomenon was sharply growing in the conditions of the collapse of the Soviet system and the radical transformation of Russian society, which threatened the national security. The article aims to identify the level of corruption in the public administration in the Southern Urals and formulate the main ways for overcoming it in the region and in the whole country. The study is based on an analysis of archival documents and materials, legal regulations, Russian media, and statistical data. In the course of the study, the authors used a set of methods: historical, analytical, comparative, as well as systematisation. This made it possible to study the problem of corruption in the bodies of state administration in Chelyabinsk Oblast comprehensively. The sufficiently secured life and a number of exclusive rights (privileges) of representatives of power structures did not guarantee their law-abiding behaviour; instead, this led to an even greater desire for enrichment. The intertwining of criminal elements with officials led to the fact that the level of corruption in Chelyabinsk Oblast reached a very considerable size in the 1990s. The forms of corruption behaviour were lobbying of own interests to the detriment of the interests of the region's population, raider capture of enterprises (economic objects), protection racket, bribery, misappropriation and embezzlement of budget funds, extortion. The law enforcement agencies and the judiciary worked extremely inefficiently, ignoring these crimes. As a result, there was a significant increase in crime, including contract killings of heads of large enterprises in the region. A number of criminal cases received wide coverage in the media. A turning point in the fight against corruption occurred in 1996, when P.I. Sumin, the new governor of Chelyabinsk Oblast, together with the Prosecutor's Office and the court began an active and systematic fight against corruption crimes. It was a success. By the end of the 1990s, the situation in the region was stabilised. The authors conclude that corruption is an evil that must be destroyed. Such measures as the development and adoption of a set of legislative acts, not only in the criminal sphere, but also in other branches of Russian law-administrative, civil, tax, budgetary, customs, etc.-should help to combat it effectively. Anti-corruption should be organised at all levels of government: federal, regional, municipal.
