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Russian democracy growing steadily – Medvedev
Published: 10 September, 2010, 14:36
Edited: 11 September, 2010, 07:49
TAGS: Medvedev, Russia, Politics
Russia is on the right track towards democratization, President Dmitry Medvedev told a conference of foreign and Russian experts held at the Global Policy Forum in Yaroslavl.
Opening Day Two’s plenary session Dmitry Medvedev addressed Russian and foreign delegates and talked about political institutions and modernization.
Speaking on the subject of Russia’s political system, Medvedev appeared confident and optimistic.
“I don’t have the feeling that we live in a ‘stale’ atmosphere, that we are stagnating, that we have a police regime,” Medvedev said. “I think we have gained a steady pace of social development.
Responding to outside criticism of Russia’s current political system, Medvedev said “a parliamentary democracy would be a disaster for us.”
“We have been told [to adopt] a parliamentary democracy. But for Russia, I’m afraid, a parliamentary democracy would be a disaster,” the president said.
Explaining Medvedev’s remarks regarding a parliamentary democracy, political journalist Sergey Brilev said, “Russia requires a very strong executive, given the size, given its history…and the diversity of different ethnicities living in the country. So a strong executive is a must. It is a requirement for the Russian political system. I can’t really see how it can be achieved through parliamentary channels.”
Also in his speech, Medvedev mentioned that it has been exactly a year since he wrote his famous "Go, Russia!” article, which outlined the need to modernize the Russian economy.
“Since then, we have made some achievements, but certainly we are not satisfied with the current state of affairs,” Medvedev said. “But I don’t think there is any alternative to modernizing the economy and the political system.”
According to Medvedev, diversifying Russia’s economy and steering away from resource dependence is crucial to the country’s development.
“We absolutely must reform the economic system, otherwise we have no future,” he said.
Democracy was also the main topic of Dmitry Medvedev's keynote speech at the forum.
Professor of political science from Yale University Ian Shapiro, who asked Medvedev about Russia’s role in promoting democracy in countries like North Korea, Burma, Iran and Africa, said the president gave a “heartening” answer.
“He said that the best way Russia can help promote democracy in the world is by being a successful democracy itself and being an example of a country that has managed to democratize relatively quickly in the past 20 years or so.”
10.09.2010, 12:10
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A socioeconomic and political system can either be capitalistic or a socialistic. Democracy is at best a manifestation of a system, it is not a system in itself. So when Mr. Medvedev says that Russian democracy is flourishing, does he mean that capitalism has started making roots in Russia? Today there is a tendency among Russians to deride everything that is linked to its communist past.Stalin is criticised for his excesses. Whatever Soviet Union achieved is lost in the cacophony of wild criticisms of communism.I have so many questions but to start with I would like to know 'Whether Soviet could have at all existed had Stalin been not there?'
Great ,but what direction,western society is the least diserable,Sex drugs ,perverted legalisied pornograph ie hollywood movies and broadcasting,polluction of the minds of its subjects..Best advice to any non western country,prohibit any western media and crap from entering its country.
The advantage of democracy is not that it suddenly makes everyone wise, or that the best national policies necessarily emerge as a result. Its great benefits are that the policies which do emerge are broadly based and are therefore likely to avoid extremism. With the presence of a genuinely free press and genuinely independent judiciary, leaders are called to account for their actions, and corruption and despotism is minimised. With genuinely free and fair elections and a genuinely independent legislature, ideas and policies can be freely argued back and forth, and however vigorous the arguments may get these will still be far short of armed insurrection in the streets. Russia suffers on all the above counts through not having genuine parliamentary democracy. As a result its national policies are often even more short-sighted than those of democracies, large segments of its population feel passively uninvolved or worse, actively excluded, the leadership is not called to account for its blunders, corruption flourishes, investigative journalists are murdered and armed unrest splutters on here and there around the country. All this handicaps not only the state’s attempt to modernize but also its relations with neighbouring countries and with the wider world community. The end-result is, that Russian people cannot live as well as they otherwise would. Russia has absolutely no shortage of natural resources nor of talented people. But it lacks a political system that would empower its people to use their abilities to the full so as to best utilise their country’s resources for their own benefit and for the benefit of the world community.