Anna Arutunyan

Liberal supporters of President Dmitry Medvedev cranked up the pressure for radical reforms last week, calling on Russia to dismantle the Federal Security Service and the Interior Ministry, do away with conscription, reintroduce direct elections for governors and even join the European Union.

In the wake of the large-scale protest in Kaliningrad a few days earlier, Igor Yurgen's report - "21st-Century Russia: Reflections on an Attractive Tomorrow" - described an optimistic scenario where the government had been successful in pushing through a liberal overhaul of its political and economic system.

In its timing, analysts said the report looked like a rallying call to get Medvedev's modernisation campaign back on track, and that it reflected polarisation in a pre-election period that seems to have begun early.

Yurgens' Institute of Contemporary Development, a think tank chaired by Medvedev, has been urging modernisation since it was created two years ago. Its policies are a few steps ahead of Medvedev's plan, which has included battling corruption and boosting innovation in the economy.
Efforts at modernisation had not been very effective so far, Yurgens said.

"We pay much more attention to image and PR than we do to substance and tactics," he told journalists at a RIA Novosti briefing on Thursday. "Someone develops a strategy, but after that the methods start becoming Soviet. Not enough milk production? The agriculture chief calls you in and says we can't show these results to the premier. And like that - the results are changed."
His 68-page essay, co-authored by economist Yevgeny Gontmakher, describes a somewhat Utopian country after massive political and economic modernisation.

"Parasitic-distributive values have been replaced by creative-production values. The model of the people serving the government is replaced by a model in which the government serves the people," the report says. "Russia is a federal republic with a strong president and a strong two-chamber parliament.
A right-centrist and a left-centrist party make up the core of the party system," each getting about 35 per cent of the vote.

According to Yurgens' and Gontmakher's modernisation scenario, the state would halve its stake in business to under 30 per cent, diversify its economy and wean itself off its oil addiction. After extensive law enforcement reforms, the Interior Ministry would be replaced by a Federal Service of Criminal Police - and a separate Financial Police would investigate economic crimes. The FSB, meanwhile, would be replaced by a counter-intelligence agency.

Yurgens did not give a timetable for the reforms, but said they were "inevitable" if Russia was to survive in its present form.
He did not specifically link the reforms to either Medvedev or Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Asked about the two leaders' joint leadership, he recalled that Putin's favourite word was "carefully".

"I've heard him say this many times at meetings," said Yurgens. "He is "carefully" guiding Medvedev through his presidency. Then they will decide" who runs for president in 2012, he said.
But the former president coming back to the Kremlin "is not the best choice for Putin, the country or those who surround him", Yurgens said.

The timing of the report and its findings have fuelled speculation that Yurgens could be angling for a bigger political role, possibly as a candidate to lead the liberal Right Cause party - a successor to the now-defunct Union of Right Forces.

Pravoye Delo's current leader is Boris Titov, head of Opora, a lobby group representing small- and medium-size businesses.
Natalya Shavshukova, a spokeswoman for Pravoye Delo, told The Moscow News that Yurgens' candidature had been discussed but it was "too early" to say who might succeed Titov as the party's leader.

Mark Urnov, a political scientist at the Higher School of Economics, said the government needed to start adopting the reforms outlined in the report, "or modernisation simply won't happen".

Along with recent feuding between United Russia and the left-leaning Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov, the report showed that a shift was underway in the country's political life, Urnov said.

"As the country eases out of the crisis, social unrest becomes more dangerous," he said, noting that political change often happens just as economic conditions start to improve. "The worst thing the Kremlin could do is launch a new wave of repression."