Medvedev ready for his
Russian moment By Nicolai N Petro
Those seeking to categorize Dmitry Medvedev, the presumptive next president of
Russia (elections are due on March 2), have quickly settled into two camps:
pessimists, who dismiss him as a Vladimir Putin puppet, and optimists, who
cling to the slim hope that he might some day develop his own agenda.
A careful reading of his more than 2,000 public pronouncements over the past
seven years, however, suggests that neither of these descriptions is accurate.
His record indicates that Medvedev will indeed pursue a concerted
liberalization of Russian politics, not as an alternative to the Putin Plan,
but as the next logical stage in its evolution.
A law professor by training, Medvedev (43) was initially put in
charge of judicial reform. In just four years he managed to eliminate most of
the local laws that contradicted the Russian constitution and spearhead the
introduction of a new criminal code, a juvenile justice system, trial by jury,
habeus corpus and a nation-wide system of bailiffs.
Later, despite supervising four new Priority National Projects (PNPs) in
healthcare, education, housing and agriculture, he continued to take an active
interest in legal reforms, promoting a new nationwide network of free legal
support centers and supervising the liberalization of governmental policy on
immigration.
By some accounts, it was this experience with trying to reform the cumbersome
Soviet legal system that led him to formulate a simple economic credo: "If
government participation is not essential, then the government should not be
involved."
According to Medvedev, the state has only two positive economic obligations.
First, to assist Russian companies to become more globally competitive. Second,
to combat poverty. Beyond that he says, sounding at times like a supply-side
economist, the only taxes that the government may legitimately collect are
those needed for the functioning of the state, and those that will make
business in Russia the most profitable in the world.
Time and again, the solutions Medvedev has proposed for Russia's social
problems reflect a clear preference for market-based answers. He has forced
regions to compete with each other for federal funding. In education,
healthcare and pension reform he has championed the idea that government
funding ought to follow individuals rather than institutions. He lobbied hard
for, and finally won, changes in the law to allow universities to set up their
own small businesses and create endowments to ensure funding independent from
the state.
Even when the state retains control of a corporation, Medvedev has insisted
that it be reconstituted as a public company and forced to compete globally for
private investment. His model is Gazprom, where he has served as chairman of
the board for the past seven years and whose capitalization has increased
50-fold in that period. He now proposes changes at other state corporations to
attract US$1 trillion of new investment into Russia's decaying infrastructure.
Market and legal terminology also suffuse Medvedev's approach to civil society.
He has described the relationship between government and civil society as a
contract, which government "offers" to civil society in the form of specific
national priorities. If that offer is accepted, the results will be positive,
and if not it must be changed. Civil society, he says, serves admirably "to
prevent idiotic excesses" by government.
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) must play a key role in any truly vibrant
civil society, which is why he insists that every level of government in Russia
must "absolutely use the experience of NGOS and public organizations which,
among other things, have learned to control their expenses better than
government". Government officials need to set up a stable system of "direct and
permanent contacts with NGOs". Without such feedback, he says, "The government
is blind and winds up working only for itself."
To encourage the growth of NGOs, he has pushed through legislation supporting
business philanthropy and given tax exemptions to businesses that support NGOs.
Charities, he points out, not only do good work, they also serve "as a serious
medicine against dependency and paternalism, which we have historically been
disposed to".
Other notable Medvedev initiatives include: independent public television, an
independent judiciary and parliamentary oversight of the executive branch. In
contrast to Putin, he has said that future presidents of Russia ought to be
members of a political party, and that strong political parties are "the only
way of making politicians accountable for their ideas".
Reaching out to Russia's business community, which he would like to see more
involved in policymaking, Medvedev has created a Council of Experts to help
generate new ideas for the Priority National Projects. His policy of "mutual
interpenetration" of business and government is a striking contrast to Putin's
"equidistant removal" of major business interests from government.
Eyes on the world Nowhere, however, is Medvedev's emphasis on pragmatism more evident
than in foreign policy, where he invariably stresses areas where the West and
Russia should be cooperating.
Russia will eventually obtain the world's respect "not through strength, but
through responsible behavior and success" says Medvedev; until then, he
proposes that Europeans take a page out the history of the formation of the
European Coal and Steel Community (a forerunner to the European Union) and
consider an "asset swap" with Russia that will guarantee energy security for
the entire continent and promote "the best form of partnership".
Allowing Russian investment in refinery and distribution in Europe in exchange
for European investment in oil and gas extraction in Russia, says Medvedev,
would create a "virtuous cycle" bolstering economic efficiency and security
throughout the continent. "The Europeans say that we are putting them in a
tight corner because they come to depend too much on deliveries of Russian gas.
Let us exchange assets then, and we will be dependant on them too."
One likely leitmotif of Russian foreign policy under Medvedev is thus already
apparent: security is enhanced when countries share risk. This model, moreover,
can be extended from the economic, to the political, to the military arena.
What, then, should the West expect from a Medvedev administration?
His most recent campaign speeches have all been consistent with his record. He
has proposed a new national television channel dedicated to legal education,
"aggressive" support for business, shifting a "significant" portion of local
government functions to NGOs, a national plan to fight bureaucracy, and tax
exemptions for personal health care, education and pension expenditures.
But while it is tempting to regard such liberal rhetoric as a dramatic break
with the past, Medvedev himself does not see it that way. As he sees it, during
the chaos of the 1990s the government had to concentrate on re-establishing
central authority, establishing a "unified legal space", shoring up the
domestic economy, liberating politics and the media from the control of
oligarchs, and laying the foundations for an independent foreign policy. In all
these areas, Medvedev not only agreed with Putin's policies - he played a key
role in formulating them.
Now that the situation in the country has stabilized, it is time to shift the
focus from consolidation to liberalization. If, during the 1990s "screws were,
perhaps, screwed on too tight", now they can be relaxed. The watchwords of
Medvedev's approach to politics, both then and now, are "flexibility" and
"pragmatism".
The view of Medvedev as a lackey blindly carrying out Putin's bidding is
therefore clearly unrealistic, as is the view that Medvedev will develop
policies at odds with those that he has been carrying out over the past seven
years.
Rather, it appears that most observers simply underestimated the Russian
government's ability to conceive of and carry out its own strategy of
democratic modernization, now commonly referred to as the Putin Plan, and also
completely missed its purpose, which Medvedev sums up as "an effective civil
society ... composed of mature individuals ready for democracy". As a result,
according to Medvedev's long-time political advisor, Gleb Pavlovsky, the West
essentially "slept through Russia's rebirth".
Medvedev's rise is thus a portent of the historic challenge that Russia's first
truly post-Soviet generation is about to face - the creation of Russia's first
truly liberal society.
For the West, this young, dynamic, liberal and patriotic leader offers a
singular opportunity to re-engage with Russia, an opportunity that can be
realized, however, only if we awake from our long, post-Soviet slumber.
Nicolai N Petro served as the US State Department's special
assistant for policy on the Soviet Union under president George H W Bush, and
now teaches international politics at the University of Rhode Island (USA).
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