Russia must democratize, join NATO and the EU, shrink its military, and disband its Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service, according to a new report released today by a think tank linked to President Dmitry Medvedev.
Urgent economic reforms cannot be realized without political modernization, says the report, “21st-Century Russia: Reflections on an Attractive Tomorrow,” published by the Institute of Contemporary Development.
“Russia has always been in constant turbulence,” said Yevgeny Gontmakher, one of the report’s authors. “Modernization should put an end to this stress and give Russia stable, civilized development.”
Medvedev has frequently called for modernization, but critics say he has failed to deliver – or been stifled by factions close to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
But the analysis was dismissed by United Russia officials who said that it idealizes the 1990s, a time of trauma and upheaval for many ordinary Russians.
“Their mistake is that they think that there was an ideal democracy then. But it was in the 1990s that the system of social security and many other civil rights were destroyed,” said State Duma Deputy Sergei Markov.
Other observers suggested that the paper is a PR exercise aimed at the West.
Neither Medvedev nor Putin want democracy for Russia, said Stanislav Belkovsky. “They know that past democratic experiments ended in failure — Nicholas II was executed, and Gorbachev lost his job and his state,” he said.
The report is primarily designed to promote debate about Russia’s political trajectory, said ICD head Igor Yurgens.
“If during the discussion we understand that we are supported by a significant part of the elite, by those that are leaders of public opinion, then we will propose more concrete measures,” he told the Financial Times.
The report calls for a genuine multiparty system, for gubernatorial elections to be restored and the presidential term of office to be reduced to five years. Putin’s abolition of gubernatorial elections was a significant milestone in Russia’s democratic regression.
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