What people used as bribes in Tsarist Russia

Corruption is as old as the world and many cases of it are described in Russian literature, often in an ironic way. In the 1789 comedy 'Yabeda' ('Chicane') by Vasily Kapnist, for example, there is a song about taking bribes: 'What are our hands for but to take them!'

"I tell every one plainly that I take bribes, but what kind of bribes? Why, greyhound puppies. That's a totally different matter," says Judge, a ch