By Vestnik Kavkaza
Russia provides a successful foreign policy, but we have problems in the spheres of human resources and economy. These are conclusions of experts, participants of the international discussion club ‘Valdai’, who estimated Russia’s development in various spheres for the fourth time in political, economic, socio-humanitarian, and international spheres. Experts from 18 countries of the world participated in last year's survey, this year this number has already reached 26 countries. 76% of them were foreigners.
Pavel Andreev, the executive director of the Fund of Development and Support of the international discussion club ‘Valdai’, noted the continuing trend towards the similarity in the responses of Russian and foreign specialists. A quarter of Russians and three-quarters of foreigners in general more or less agree in their assessments of the trends that have characterized the development of Russia.”
Domestic policy
“Given the certain ambivalence of evaluations of the effectiveness of President’s work, almost 40% of the respondents consider it has decreased or increased and 20% that it has not changed, almost 60% of respondents believe that public confidence in the president is falling. The opinion of the experts does not quite correspond to the data of opinion polls, for example, by the Levada Center, which shows that the president's rating remains at the same level. It means that on this matter the experts disagree with the public. It is significant that the trend of the decline of public confidence, in general, is being observed for already more than a year now, and not only and not so much in regard to the President as to all the institutions of the federal government. Among the outsiders based on this indicator is the ruling party, the government and the courts,” Andreev stated.
Economy
69% respondents noted a negative trend in the macroeconomic picture. A certain "slide" is seen in the commodities, processing and innovative industries. Some positive momentum is shown only by the financial sector, in the rest there is a negative trend which was there in the last year as well.
The human factor
Against the background of such a sad economic picture, experts have surprisingly positively evaluated the trends in living standards of Russians. The level of patriotism, as seen by the experts, has gone up from 27% in the last year to 69%. The negative evaluation of the level of tolerance that still remains negative and is quite serious - 71% of respondents believe that tolerance is decreasing. Experts highlighted a positive growth of government funding in the sciences, the most negative trend is the brain drain.
Security
Russia in the sphere of national, regional and global security is the most positive trend. Here in a particularly positive light the level of equipping the army with modern weapons is commented upon, almost 70% positive ratings, the level of advanced military research - more than 50%, and all of that leads to an increase in the combat capability of the Russian armed forces.
Foreign policy
Andreev stressed that the survey was conducted in August and September, just before the G20, before Putin's initiative on Syrian chemical weapons, but it seems that that work and a certain consistency and constructive attitude of the Russian Federation has already been appreciated. Russia's influence in the international arena, in mediations on the settlement of international conflicts and diplomatic initiatives in the past year, are seen positively.
Sergei Karaganov, the representative of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, said that “a very important role in the assessments by the outside world and by the inside played the fact that pessimism reigns in Russia. This is the main component of our current national character. We lost bravery, lost what we call boldness. It is pointless to quarrel with each other, calling each other names like "bolotnik" and traitors - some are called like this, others are called hard-headed and corrupt authoritarians, we should work in order to achieve unity. But for unity a few clear, understandable national projects and, most importantly, national strategies are absolutely necessary, which we do not have now.
According to Karaganov, “the index of "Valdai" as well as evaluation indices by experts, the situation in Russia is worse than it actually is, even though the situation is in many ways very unsatisfactory. It would be very good if the outside world thinks of us better than we are. It would certainly lead to greater investment flows and easier negotiations on certain humanitarian issues, particularly on access of our citizens according to the visa regime, but, in principle, it would not bring any fundamental changes to the situation. At the moment, in general, we already have a fairly effective propaganda tool. Watch Russia Today broadcast in the world and even the UK. No one could have even imagined that it would become so popular. We are being heard, but the main problem lies in the fact that the Russian elite, which is associated with the world, translates a negative image of Russia, that is pessimism. This is the main problem we have to solve and it can be solved only from within the country.”
