By Vestnik Kavkaza
This year “the development index of Russia” which was figured out by experts of the discussion club of Valdai is 0.0.
87 experts on Russia from Austria, Armenia, the UK, Hungary, Germany, Israel, India, Iraq, Iran, Italy, China, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Poland, Slovakia, the U.S.A., Turkey, Ukraine, Finland, France, Switzerland, Estonia, South Korea, and Japan “zeroed out” Russia, considering that it had overcome some difficulties, but problems still remained.
Fyodor Lukyanov, Chairman of the Board of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, the editor-in-chief of the magazine ‘Russia in Global Politics’, and a member of the international discussion club ‘Valdai’, thinks that “Russia feels more confident in international politics, and nobody doubts this, including experts and politicians who don’t like President Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov, and our other politicians. And the recent surprising poll by Forbes confirmed this. But for us it should be a warning, because it is easy to fall into a dreamy phase, thinking that everything is good. Meanwhile, we have either stagnation or sliding down in the internal policy. The main thing is institutional stability of the state and the society, and we cannot see any progress here. We can call it an absence of optimism.”
As for the Russian policy of ‘soft power’which was positively estimated by ‘Valdai’ experts, Lukyanov doesn’t feel optimism either: “Experts estimate efforts which the state makes. In recent 2-3 years more discussions appeared, real events were held, money was invested – it is positive. The general openness is perceived positively, but nobody abroad considers Russia an open country. Everybody sees the implementation of soft power, but it doesn’t work. The things which we have inside the country surpass the efforts which are made to correct the image.”
Irina Khakamada, an opposition activist, liberal, economist, the former vice speaker of the State Duma, stated that “the problem of state management is growing; political institutes are losing trust, according to all public opinion polls. We are still very dependent on raw materials. In our active foreign economic policy and contracts which we sign with China and other Asian countries we maintain the traditional model – each time it is related only to oil or gas export.”
According to Khakamada, “there is no breakthrough; and according to various sources, we are falling into a phase of slow recession or a very weak economic growth of 3-3.5%. As Russia has huge budget expenditures on improvement of living standards and it seems deficit budget will appear in a long prospect for the first time, it leads to accumulation of debts. We get rid of old debts, but we may accumulate new ones by the next generation.”
As for foreign political activity, Khakamada thinks “we have become really active in the sphere, they respect us, and all international organizations where we take part confirm this. It is not accidental that the Russian president becomes more and more popular in influence rankings. If we look at attractiveness of our cultural and civilization model, I don’t see optimism here. We don’t understand clearly when civilization model we have… Obviously the role of the Russian language is growing in the world, but it is not an achievement of our elite. People are leaving, the young generation is leaving, with money, educated, well-bred. They are not criminals with gold chains, who bought up ties; they are a different generation. Unfortunately, they are part of other countries’ populations now.”
Khakamada thinks that the attractiveness of Russia as a place to live is decreasing, while the attitude toward Russian immigrants is improving, but it is not a success of the political elite. “Geopolitics is our cup of tea. But if we have no appropriate internal policy, foreign policy won’t be effective and precise,” Khakamada concluded.
