Russian
President Boris Yeltsin and U.S. President Bill Clinton during
the
'roaring 90s': Is Russia headed back to Yeltsin's vision?
Argumenty i Facty,
Russia
Is Russia
Preparing to Join NATO?
"The
Institute of Contemporary Development, under the patronage of President Medvedev,
has submitted a highly controversial report on the best future for our country.
… Russia will enter the WTO and - attention! - NATO."
The present furor in the
national media was triggered by the announcement of the report, "Russia in
the 21st century: The Image of the Desired Tomorrow," which has been
prepared by the Institute
of Contemporary Development (INSOR). And though no one but specialists have
ever heard of INSOR - and few people have read the text of the report - the
main provisions of the new document, published in Vedomosti, sound so
unusual that it's necessary to discuss them.
HARDER THAN IT LOOKS
The authors of the report are
the head of the Institute, Igor Jurgens, and one of its leading members, Evgeny
Gontmakher. INSOR itself is interesting, in that the head of its board of
trustees is Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, which is why the Institute has
positioned itself as a think tank of team Medvedev. Despite this, for example, the
official Web site of the Institute is exceedingly modest, and many of sections on
the site seem frankly to have been abandoned.
There are rumors that the
text of the report was personally approved by the president. However, this "Image
of the Desired Tomorrow" is so different from the "National Security
Strategy of Russia until 2020," signed by the same president, that there
arises some legitimate bewilderment. There can be either one or the other.
By itself, the idea of "painting"
an image of a certain goal is absolutely legitimate. When a carpenter starts
working, he holds in his mind the ideal image of his future table, and in this
respect building a society is no different from woodwork. The image of our
society is written by Jurgens and Gontmaher in the genre of an essay; and it
includes earlier reports from INSOR.
The current state of the
country is assessed by the authors as, "more complicated than it seems,"
so there are many problems to solve on the road to a breakthrough in
modernization. But assuming that all goes according to plan, what awaits us is,
"Russia: Noon in the 21st Century.” This so-called key part of the report
is a description of Russia after its successful modernization.
What will Russia look like
after these successful reforms? You wouldn't believe it - about the same as was
hoped for 18 years ago on a wave of "democratic" euphoria.
The political system will be
similar to Yeltsin's; the President will be elected for 5 years, the Duma [parliament]
for 4 years. There will be some 20 parties in the country, but two will be key -
one center-left and the other center-right. Electoral law will become markedly
more liberal, so the "threshold" for entry into the Duma will be
reduced to 4 percent [parties that win at least 4 percent of the vote will be
represented].
The popular election of
senators and governors will be introduced. The persecution of non-profit
organizations will cease, and they will be allowed to obtain funding from
abroad.
There will be no media censorship.
"Brain drain" will
cease; on the contrary, the best minds in the world will strive to come to
Russia.
The Ruble will become a
currency used for international trade.
Mandatory military conscription
will be discounted.
The Ministry of Internal
Affairs, which the authors call a "police service," will be
eliminated, replaced by the newly-created Federal Criminal Police. Functions of
the disbanded traffic police will be divided among several agencies. The Federal
Security Service [FSB] will be renamed FSK (the last letter indicates
counterintelligence).
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
Russia will enter the WTO and
- attention! - NATO. And we will maintain a close partnership with the European
Union. At the same time, Russia will become a powerful center of the Commonwealth
of Independent States, and will be friendly with all of its neighbors, including
Ukraine and Georgia.
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
The steps to this future
aren't laid out in much detail, but that isn’t the issue. Yevgeny Gontmakher
expressly stated that the report was written primarily to stimulate discussion
in society, in order to provide an option for the country's development - an alternative
to the authoritarian isolationist line that is dominant today.
There are already many
responses to the theses of the report, and these should be discussed separately,
but the report was most uniquely assessed by the first deputy chairman of the
Duma Committee on State Construction, Alexander Moskalets. In his opinion, this
is a "U-turn: this way we can get to collectivization, as well.”
Previously it was believed that liberalism (and the INSOR model is, of course, very
liberal) and collectivization were opposites, but the distinguished state
construction official has his own logic.
But so far no one has
answered two main questions: did Medvedev really read the report; and did he
actually approve it?
