Russia: Managing the Political System
March 2, 2009 marked the one-year anniversary of President Medvedev's rule. Russia's ruling party, "United Russia" (Edinaya Rossia) held a forum titled "Strategy-2020," which was devoted to summaries and conclusions about the President's first 12 months. The current economic crisis took center stage during the party discussions. The most notable comment was delivered by Vladislav Surkov, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, who assured the audience made up of party functionaries, economists, journalists and political experts that while the Russian political system works effectively, calling for major changes would be an "extremely risky speculation."
The discussion revealed an interesting cross-section of the current Russian opinion about both the domestic policies and Russia's place in the international system. Valery Fadeyev, Chief Editor of the "Expert" magazine, stated at the meeting that the Medvedev-Putin tandem leadership has improved the political system of Russia, as "it has become stronger, since each of the leaders brings his own qualities into the system." According to Fadeyev, "policy is a difficult thing to begin with, and it's not logical to resist the current situation when Putin is still a strong leader." It is this political system, according to political expert Oleg Pavlovsky, that protected Russia from the fate of Iceland, Hungary, Latvia and Ukraine, "which is already not bad."
The latest Russian sociological studies also reveal a certain paradox: on the one hand, people are very realistic in evaluating the economic crisis and its aftermath, while on the other hand, they fully support the current government. According to economist Michael Yuriev, "there exists no political system that would be good at everything, each has its detriments." As for the economic crisis, Yuriev thinks that under the current circumstances, it is important that Russia's long-term strategic interests would not be affected by the current needs of the Russian economy. "If we begin to pursue policies that would limit our dependence on the global economy, we will pay some of the costs of this policy in the future, but they would be small - and we would obviously benefit in the short-term. Otherwise, we do not know what would be the future result from our total integration, but the fact that we could lose now is very clear."
The economic crisis may have irrevocably affected Russia's already gloomy demographic situation. The first months of the crisis put an end to governments talks on the expected demographic breakthrough, which was predicted by Russia's leaders over the last few years. The expected boom in fertility rates has been one of the most important discussion subjects for both President Medvedev and then-President Putin. The demographic issue even took center stage during Medvedev's election campaign. By the end of 2008, Russian Health Ministry still gave optimistic predictions on this issue. However, there has been no discussion of Russian demographic situation at the highest levels of power for the past several months, while the experts argue that the country faces a demographic decline.
