Business Watch
by Gordon Hahn
In recent remarks outgoing Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev declared himself to be a conservative. He made his remarks in a speech accepting a proposal to become a member and chairman of the Kremlin’s United Russia party (Irina Granik, “Ni razu ne liberal,” Kommersant, 28 April 2012). Unfortunately, there have been some grossly inaccurate and politicized ‘analyses’ of his remarks.
By Gordon M. Hahn
During the Cold War Washington and Moscow constructed the barricades that made for what Alexander Solzhenitsyn called “a world split apart.”
Today, there are still many issues on which the U.S. and the West stand on opposite sides of the barricade from Russia. Now, however, the twilight socialist-capitalist ideological struggle is absent. The only ideological aspect to new divergence (and competition of interests) is external to the immediate Russia-West relationship––and is “religious” not economic.
Last Thursday (26 April) outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had a frank and open discussion with news anchors of Russian television networks Channel One, Rossiya (RTR), NTV, Dozhd and REN TV in the studios of Ren-TV which was broadcast live. This is the complete transcript of the broadcast as translated by the Presidsential Press Office and available on the web site http://eng.kremlin.ru/
Recent events raise hopes for regime transformation in Russia. For the past four years Russia has been undergoing a very gradual liberalization that has been much like an iceberg melting. The big question is how and what kind of transformation it will be. A country’s form of rule can be transformed in several ways, and can produce democratic, authoritarian, totalitarian, or hybrid (soft authoritarian or weak democratic) outcomes. Historically, there are two basic kinds of internally-driven regime change: revolution and transition. These transitions, as a rule, are more likely to produce democratic outcomes than revolutions.