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Medvedev modernisation programme

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Background

After the near total collapse in 1998, the Russian economy recovered as a result of high oil prices during the presidency of Vladimir Putin, but remained heavily dependent on energy and raw material exports. In the first decade of the 2000s, global oil prices kept rising, fuelling economic growth. Medvedev later stated his belief that this was not only a boom, but also damaging to the Russian economy, saying that if the oil price is too high, "we’d never change the structure of our economy... We haven’t done anything in the last 10 years because oil kept rushing higher and higher."

There had been repeated calls for a more diversified economy under Putin; already in 2005, Putin's Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov warned about the dependency of the economy on raw material exports, and in 2007 Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov said that without diversification, the Russian economy will sooner or later face a collapse. Dmitry Medvedev, elected as president in 2008, made economic modernisation his prime presidential agenda. Medvedev's statements regarding this issue went much further than other statements by the Russian leadership. In 2009, Medvedev founded the Presidential Commission on Innovation. The commission comprises almost the entire Russian government and some of the best minds from academia and business.

"Go Russia!"

Medvedev outlined his programme in an article called "Go Russia!" that was published online in September 2009. In the article, he formulated his strategic objective of modernising Russia. He criticised Russia's economic "backwardness" and what he called Russia's "humiliating" dependency on oil and raw materials. He described the Russian society as "archaic" and "paternalistic" and said that the country can no longer rely on the achievements of the past to secure a prosperous future. In Medvedev's view, Russia should aim for a modern, diversified economy based on high technology and innovation. Medvedev criticised the previous attempts to modernise Russia—those initiated by Peter I the Great and the Soviet Union—saying that the results they brought came at too high a cost, and this time modernisation must come not through coercion but via the development of the creative potential of every individual, through private entrepreneurship and initiative.

Medvedev identified five key areas for economic modernisation, in which breakthroughs must be achieved:

Medvedev further discussed and publicised his programme in his second state of the nation address in November 2009, as well as in a televised speech in December 2009.

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