Actually, bribe/kickbacks in Russia are now very SCARCE, due to the criminality of it - this is now very well documented. When I first went to Russia, everything was bribable, from Customs at the airport turning a blind eye, to Militia taking money for a speeding ticket etc. Now, you even offer, you go to jail. The crack down on corruption is enormous. Perhaps when you left your former CIS country, the corruption was rife. Not so now.
Corruption and QC issues are just as rife in Western industry - take the most recent grounding of supposed "state of the art" F-35 fighters - grounded after a catastrophic failure of a fuel system (much like perhaps the latest Soyuz). Does this mean an end for the F-35? Unfortunately (
), no. There is a 900+ item list of known defects - some Cat 1 - in the F-35 that have been effectively hushed so the aircraft could meet deadlines imposed on it by Congress.