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Anchor Marco Werman speaks with Christian Science Monitor correspondent Fred Weir in Moscow about the Russian culture of accountability.

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MARCO WERMAN: Fred Weir is also covering the Lame Horse nightclub fire. He’s the Moscow correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor.  He says that many in Russia blame a culture of corruption, indifference, and fatalism for disasters like this.

FRED WEIR: I think it’s an age-old problem probably because people disconnected and always have been from authority and means of getting things done. You know, it’s common for people in Russia to say, “Well, nothing depends on me.”  I think that’s part of the story and the corruption comes also from just an unaccountable bureaucracy.  They’re not electives. They’re not transparent.  They’re not susceptible to public pressure and they tend to use their positions, and this is an age-old thing in Russia again, to enrich themselves. These things come together and often fueled by alcohol to create all kinds of really unsafe conditions. It’s not just fires like this that kill an enormous number of Russians every year. It’s carnage on the road. It’s a hospital system that’s a shambles and filled with horror stories. It’s all kinds of things that are affected by this kind of lackadaisical indifferent culture.

WERMAN: And you saw an extraordinary number of people who die by fire in Russia each year. I mean, is there any evidence showing that alcohol is responsible for any percentage, a large percentage of those deaths?

WEIR: Well, a lot of it is anecdotal but yes you generally hear about people being asleep at the switch because they’re drunk. You know, we  had this huge nursing home fire that killed I think 100 people in Russia some time ago, and maybe two years ago, and that was traced with a drunken night guard who simply failed to raise the alarm.  I mean, this comes up but I’m not aware of statistics.

WERMAN: Fred, you’ve been in Russia for a while and so correct me if I’m wrong about this, but there does seem to be this problem with public accountability in terms of public safety specifically in a sense that life is cheap. Is that right and if it is, why do you think it’s the case?

WEIR: Yes, again that is the product of history where an old ruler is not accountable.

WERMAN: How far back in history are you talking here?

WEIR: I would say a thousand years.  Russia has never had a functioning democracy. It doesn’t have the civil society, the kinds of community avenues by which people say in the United States do insert themselves in the process. Again, not perfect but you have so many different ways if you’re an individual in a western country to express yourself, to be heard, to at least, you know, take a shot at rhetorical at an official who you feel has wronged you. You have so many different ways. They just don’t exist in Russia and never did. And this, of course, leads to the sense of impunity on the part of bureaucrats and officials who just don’t feel any need to respond to public pressure.

WERMAN: I guess that could change because President Dmitry Medvedev gave a speech recently in which he called for sweeping modernization of Russia. Is Medvedev serious about this? And even if he is serious, does he have the power to bring about such changes.

WEIR: Well, no, it is common for Russian leaders to make good speeches and Medvedev made a really, really good one in which he identified a lot of the things that are wrong with the country.  But this involved actually changing the bureaucracy, dragging them out into the open, making them publicly accountable, having elections that are truly competitive and which would allow opposition figures perhaps to come to power.  You know, allow people in the communities to show initiative runs the risk of them challenging authority. And this is where Russian reformers always tend to draw the line after they’ve made these wonderful speeches.  They want the country to modernize but they don’t want opposition to form. They don’t want real independent initiatives to take place. And that’s the conundrum that we always face.

WERMAN: I mean it must matter a little bit, though, that Medvedev is making these critiques of the status quo in Russia. At the very least, it must rankle Vladimir Putin.

WEIR: Well, there is this tension now between the Prime Minister who remains very power, and the president who’s new. He was a protégé of that Prime Minister of Putin’s, and he may be trying to break free. But if we’re talking about a bureaucratic war or allegiance, that doesn’t necessarily, add up to modernization of the country, which is quite a different huge historical past. And, I mean, I’m not as pessimistic as I sound. I have seen a lot of changes that have happened in Russia. I’ve lived here for 23 years. Some things are much better, but at the same time one just gets cynical at what is clearly political theater intended to impress everybody that they’re doing something.  But then things go back to the way they were.

WERMAN: Fred Weir, Christian Science Monitor’s correspondent in Moscow.  Thank you very much for your time.

WEIR: You’re welcome.

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