The article published on Friday in the newspaper Vedomosti, shows a cabinet leader under growing pressure from an increasingly autocratic president and a gradually weaking economy. The premier admits that ruling trends in the country efficiently keep away potential investors and that small and medium-sized enterprises play an insignificant role in current economic affairs.
In the article, which in many respects can be seen as a follow-up of Medvedev’s article “Russia, Forward” from September 2009, the PM calls for a major reorientation of the Russian economy. In order to boost growth, the state “should not occupy an unjustified big part of the economy”. Instead, Russia should “move towards a smart state, whose main value is based on the individual”, he writes.
What Medvedev wants is “a smaller and decentralized, but maximum efficient state sector” and a state where businesspeople have “the biggest possible freedom to act and to take new initiatives”. Furthermore, the prime minister also proposes far more freedom of power for regional leaders.
Medvedev wants major reforms, but already in the title of his article admits that “the time for easy solutions has passed”. Despite high prices on oil and major export revenues, the Russian economy is rapidly stagnating. Industrial growth was zero in the first half of the year and the GDP growth is likely to dip well below two percent in 2013.
“We are at a crossroads”, Medvedev writes. “Russia can continue a very slow, close to zero percent, economic growth, or it can make a serious leap ahead”.
The article from Medvedev comes just a week after he announced that the federal budget will be cut with five, and in some points up to ten, percent.
Paradoxically, on the same day as Medvedev presented his article, another prominent figure in Russian politics, former finance minister Aleksey Kudrin, presented a new report on civil society in the country
That report highlights the key role of NGOs in Russian economic and societal development, newspaper Kommersant reports. According to Kudrin, the civil society can be the “ignition device for change”. Without the civil society, there can be no full-fledged control over the bodies of power, he argues. The report is published in connection with the upcoming Civic Forum, an event which is organized by Kudrin’s Committee of Civic Initiatives.
For Aleksey Kudrin, the development of the civil society appears to be the solution for Russia. Meanwhile, for Prime Minister Medvedev, despite his high stress of the role of the Russian individual, the rule of law and the need for comprehensive reform, the words civil society and NGO remains beyond his government priorities.
