Did this corruption involve bribes? If so, how could private Soviet citizens bribe the nomenklatura if most of the stuff ordinary people had was of little interest to the nomenklatura. Did private Soviet citizens have bank accounts with money that could be used for bribes? Or was it in the form of gifts of fine homegrown produce from babushka's garden? Or expensive Western stuff from the black market (which ironically was supplied and controlled by the nomenklatura, as you point out.)
Or - what can people sell when they have no stuff to offer? Themselves!? Did desperate women bribe the male members of the nomenklatura with sex? (Elisabeth, perhaps you remember from "The Russian Soul" thread why the very word "nomenklatura" makes me nauseous in a S/M kind of way..... Blame it on the excellent German movie Das Leben der Anderen, where a young actress bribes a fat old member of the East German nomenklatura with sex.)
A meeting of two minds, Fyodor Petrovich, the minute you raised the issue of "desperate women" bribing "male members of the nomenklatura with sex" - that's exactly what came to mind, Donnersmarck's film (in English)
The Lives of Others. The same actress who plays Meinhof in the film
The Baader-Meinhof Complex stars in this role, she's completely different from one role to the next, sorry I can't remember her name but you probably can... Okay, just looked it up, it's Martina Gedeck. Brilliant actress.
But getting back to sexual favors under communism, I think this was actually pretty common, and it is nausea-making (as opposed to merely nauseating). Because there was of course no recourse. Even today, in most capitalist societies (well, especially places like Russia) there's very little recourse, because one is usually a lowly peon accusing a high-ranking official of misusing his power. (The definition of sexual harassment includes the total power imbalance usually existing between the two parties.) We all know how most whistle-blowers end. Usually in the dustbin of (corporate) history. But yes, I think it might have even been worse under communism, at least as it's shown in
The Lives of Others because here the victim can't even complain to anybody, not her dearest friend, not her lover, she has to give in. And the silence and shame surrounding it eventually, as you know, lead to her interrogation by the secret police and her suicide.