Medvedev's Team: How a Group of Reformers Hope to Revitalize Russia's Economy

President Dmitry Medvedev published a striking essay titled “Russia, Forward!” Far from extolling his country’s virtues, as national leaders usually do, Medvedev decried its shortcomings, criticizing Russia for its “humiliating raw-material dependence” and “chronic corruption.” He called on his citizens to join him in a modernization campaign that would make the country “richer, freer, more humanitarian.”

Stanislav Voskresensky, a 34-year-old deputy minister of Economic Development, is trying his best to do just that. Voskresensky is in charge of improving Russia’s woeful energy efficiency, one of five sectors Medvedev has targeted for his national leap forward. (The others are information technology, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment, telecommunications and nuclear power.) To that end, the young apparatchik last year devised a series of pilot projects to replace conventional incandescent lightbulbs with light-emitting diodes, only to hit a snag. One sentence buried in a tome of regulations churned out during the chaotic 1990s flatly forbade the use of LEDs in Russia, regarding them as dangerous.

Voskresensky lobbied government colleagues and lawmakers in the Duma to convince them of the conservation benefits and safety of LEDs. His efforts paid off. In November 2009 the Duma passed an energy law that phases out incandescent bulbs by 2014 and sets new energy standards for buildings and appliances, in a bid to green an economy that currently burns more than three times as much energy per unit of GDP as countries in the European Union.

如此核不地说，Wonkish的变化是让俄罗斯更好的东西，Voskresensky断言。“我们的改革比叶罗·戈尔达尔（Yegor Gaidar）的改革不那么性感，”他告诉机构投资者，提到1992年在俄罗斯释放“休克治疗”的总理。“但它们更为重要亚博赞助欧冠。”

Voskresensky is not well known, even in Russia, but that may change if his reform efforts succeed. He is part of a coterie of government ministers and advisers who are seeking to turn Medvedev’s modernizing vision into reality. These reformers include Arkady Dvorkovich, 38, a Duke University–educated economist who is Medvedev’s chief economic adviser. He is leading a charge to sell shares in state companies and expedite the country’s long-delayed entry into the World Trade Organization. Another key player is Igor Shuvalov, 43, a lawyer who is currently first deputy prime minister and is shepherding the kind of microreform efforts that occupy officials like Voskresensky. Shuvalov, who took on a new role this fall as ombudsman for foreign investment, says the government has halved the number of customs documents and lifted civil-service pay to discourage corruption.

Several luminaries from outside the Kremlin have also joined Medvedev’s crusade. Viktor Vekselberg, a magnate who made billions in aluminum and billions more in oil, has volunteered to oversee the development of a new high-technology center, a sort of Russian Silicon Valley, in the Moscow suburb of Skolkovo. Alexander Voloshin, Kremlin chief of staff under both Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, the former president who now serves as prime minister, is steering efforts to establish Moscow as an international financial center. Ruben Aganbegyan left his post as president of investment bank Renaissance Capital to head the Micex Stock Exchange, which aims to become a pillar of that financial center. And Yevgeny Yuriev, an entrepreneur who sold his Moscow brokerage, Aton, to an arm of Italy’s UniCredit for $424 million in 2007, recently became Medvedev’s adviser on pensions and social policy.

这些人来自不同的背景，但他们分享了俄罗斯可以结束其对商品的古老依赖，并从事国家的知识产权来产生新的增长和创新来源。

一个天真的梦吗?也许。许多评论家外Russia dismiss Medvedev’s reformist rhetoric as a smokescreen for the autocracy of his mentor and presumed boss, Prime Minister Putin. Many Russians think so too. They believe current oil prices of more than $85 a barrel will enable the government to keep the economy afloat and avoid the tough changes that could boost the country’s productive capacity. “The most likely prognosis is what I call the 70-80 scenario,” says Sergei Guriev, rector of the New Economic School in Moscow. “If oil stays at $70 to $80 a barrel, Russia will stagnate like the Soviet Union did in the 1970s and ’80s.” Investors seem to be similarly skeptical, judging by their valuations. Russian stocks trade at an average price-earnings ratio of about 8, compared with 18 for India, 16 for China and 14 for Brazil.

Many observers doubt that the reformers have the backing and the time they need to implement fundamental changes in the economy. “A real modernization project takes five years at least to start showing results,” says Ruben Vardanian, chief executive of investment bank Troika Dialog, who has announced he will step down in the next few years to work on civic projects such as developing Russia’s nonprofit sector. Medvedev’s current term ends in 2012, and it’s not yet clear whether he will be nominated for a second term that would allow him to see his program through. Nothing is certain about the succession except that the final call will come from Putin, who heads United Russia, the political party that is almost sure to win the election. The supreme leader often talks up the need for new thinking in Russia. “Modernization is, in the largest sense, the question of our national future,” he said in an address to the Russian Academy of Sciences last spring. But Putin is also the architect of much that Medvedev seeks to change — from overweening police power to overweight state industry.

Voskresensky rejects the supposed dichotomy between the modernizing Medvedev and the statist Putin. He dates the dawn of the new reform era to a speech delivered by Putin himself in February 2008, just before leaving the presidency. Putin lambasted Russia’s lagging labor productivity, which was four times lower than the West’s, and called for “large-scale modernization of all sectors of the economy.” As Voskresensky puts it, “Even with oil above $100 per barrel, it was absolutely clear that if we kept on the same path, our growth would not be what we needed.”

Medvedev, who was elected in March 2008 and took office in May of that year, didn’t hesitate to grab the modernizing banner. Six days after his inauguration, he ordered a federal audit of all regional governments’ energy-saving efforts. The idea of reform took a backseat when the world financial crisis ripped through Russia in September 2008. But one year later, as the first signs of recovery began surfacing, Medvedev put modernization back on the agenda by publishing “Russia, Forward!” through the Internet news service Gazeta.ru. With that manifesto, he also signaled his determination to carve his own political profile after a career spent clinging to Putin’s coattails. A lawyer and son of a university professor from Saint Petersburg, Medvedev first went to work for Putin in 1991, when the latter, a former KGB officer, was a deputy mayor in that city. He followed Putin to Moscow in 1999 as deputy chief of staff and had never run for office before he was nominated for the presidency.

Medvedev’s reform drive was well timed. The financial meltdown had exposed Russia’s economic weaknesses for all to see. The country experienced the sharpest contraction in Europe aside from the Baltic states, with output plunging by 7.9 percent as prices for oil and other commodities sank. The drop would have been much steeper had the government not pumped in an estimated $150 billion, or 9 percent of GDP, from a fiscal reserve fund and from state banks like Sberbank and VTB Bank to keep foundering corporations afloat. Capital flight reached $130 billion in the last three months of 2008, according to the Finance Ministry.

经济崩溃重点关注俄罗斯小型和中型企业的发育性发展，由腐败，高利率和官方支持建立竞争对手。克里姆林宫别无选择，只能在几十个苏联建造的“单一的”的企业，从未培养过多种企业家的灌木丛。“俄罗斯的关键问题之一是失踪的中间，”欧洲银行在伦敦重建与发展的首席经济学家Erik Berglof说。

危机还结束了俄罗斯的十年财政美德。The government had recovered quickly from its 1998 bond default as buoyant oil prices helped it run consistent budget surpluses and build the world’s third-largest pool of currency reserves, which peaked at $557 billion in August 2008. The Reserve Fund, a rainy-day stash fueled by windfall oil receipts that hit a high of 4.9 trillion rubles ($155 billion) in January 2009, will be depleted by next year, Putin said recently. With increases in social payments outpacing tax revenues, the state will run a deficit of 4.6 percent of GDP this year, according to Finance Ministry estimates. The weak budgetary position increases the urgency of generating growth from noncommodities sectors and raising cash with a new privatization program.

今天，弗科斯克斯基追求的改革努力正在进行适度的规模。例如，小型企业的官僚骚扰大幅下跌，例如，在向监察员在闯入公司的场所之前获得检察官的许可。“我们在过去一年半看到了一些相当不错的成果，”阿诺拉副总裁Vladislav Korochkin表示，中小型企业的游说集团。“大多数代理商基本上不再触及最小的企业家了。”

这可能看起来像一个小成就,特别是considering that Russia recently ranked a lowly 154th out of 178 nations in Transparency International’s 2010 corruption perceptions index, tied with Kenya and trailing Iran and Libya. But some reformers feel the wind shifting tentatively their way. “Before ‘Russia, Forward!’ the likelihood of a modernizing path was maybe 15 percent,” says Evgeny Gontmakher, an economist at the Institute of Contemporary Development, an archliberal think tank that Medvedev founded just before taking office. “Now it is more, though still less than 50 percent.”

今天你不能去在这个国家没有头脑ring some important person voice support for the Russia, Forward! doctrine. “The future of Russia depends on modernization and innovation in the economy,” proclaimed Andrei Kostin, chief executive of VTB, the country’s second-largest bank by assets, at the opening of a Moscow investment conference in October.

随着Medvedev将他的改革留言推动超越克里姆林宫墙壁，他开始寻找可以提供帮助的外人。到目前为止，他最大的追随者是VEKSELBERG，这是一个52岁的大亨，禁止成为世界上最富有的十一个人，净值为62亿美元。

The Russian government began drawing up vague plans for a series of high-tech parks around the country as early as 2006. But it was only in March 2010 that Medvedev picked Skolkovo, a suburb just a few kilometers west of the capital’s Ring Road, as the do-or-die project for Russia’s advanced industrial future and recruited Vekselberg to oversee it. “It is important for Skolkovo to inherit the spirit that exists here,” Medvedev said during a visit to the real Silicon Valley in California a few months later. “This cannot be achieved through a presidential decree.”

The president intends to partner with private investors on the $7 billion or so that Vekselberg says it will cost to build a city of innovation, or innogorod, from scratch on Skolkovo’s gently rolling hills. A stout, dapperly attired figure with a trademark salt-and-pepper beard, Vekselberg established his reputation, and wealth, during the buccaneering days of Russia’s transition from Communism, privatizing and renovating decrepit aluminum plants in Siberia during the 1990s. But he is known as a diplomat among oligarchs.

2006年，他通过苦竞争对手和瑞士交易商Glencore International的合并来引导他的西伯利亚 - 乌拉尔铝业公司或Sual，以形成世界顶级的铝生产商。Vekselberg还帮助平息石油公司TNK-BP的矛盾争议，其中他和其他俄罗斯股东随着英国超级群体冲突，以控制50-50型企业。对抗结束了一个新的董事会和首席执行官，也是一个健康的公司，现在正在购买父母BP必须销售的资产，以便在墨西哥湾清理其大规模井喷。

“Vekselberg是这份工作的合适家伙，”纽约私募股权公司Siguler Guff＆Co公司的合伙人Draw Guff说，该公司在俄罗斯投资了大约10亿美元。“他是一个能够引起全球首席执行官的重量级。”假设Medvedev和Vekselberg将提供电力。

Vekselberg在VTB会议的演示期间展示了他的Rolodex的力量。在工作六个月内，寡头报告说，他赢得了波音公司，思科系统和西门子的坚定承诺，在Skolkovo提供现场设计或研究设施。Microsoft Corp.和Nokia Corp.自从以来起床。马萨诸塞州理工学院签署了一项协议，可以在创新城市建立卫星校园。“我们已经有了28个技术中心，仍然是我们的许多专家为西方离开，”Vekselberg说。“Skolkovo生态系统需要改变这一点。”

下一个列出的现代化活动招募是亚历山大·沃什州，梅德韦杰夫在5月份努力将莫斯科转变为国际金融中心，并考虑提升卢布储备货币地位的方法。梅德韦杰夫在2008年4月等待乘坐办理时浮动了发展金融中心的想法，看看主动是一种扭转俄罗斯IPO的流动以及与伦敦相关的银行业。

Voloshin，54，作为官僚主义妥协的硕士。他担任现任奥格兰博士博伊斯·贝雷佐斯基的职业生涯。1999年，当Berezovsky是克里姆林宫里面的领先权力经纪人时，他安排了Voloshin成为当时总统Yeltsin的工作人员。voloshin所有，但跑克里姆林宫，而且含有肛门般的yeltsin完成了他的术语。他于普京近四年曾居员工近四年，这是一位在新总统和寡头政策中统治经济的奥尔蒂尼斯之间的紧张互动的调解员。他于2003年底离开了普京政府当这种关系磨损米哈伊尔Khodorkovsky的逮捕，那么亿万富翁石油公司尤科斯负责人。但Voloshin与那个成功担任普京职员的主任的人保持了良好的关系，Dmitry Medvedev。

在克里姆林宫辞职后，沃什金斯担任巨型州电力公用事业UE的董事会主席。观察员在吉律说改革团队的一位Pugniace Rovery Chubais之间进行了审理，杜拉德改革队的Pugniace老将，以及楚那人们在政府中的许多敌人作为权力垄断改革的关键因素，这在2007年 - 08年被打破并主要私有化。“如果没有沃洛姆，这可能永远不会发生，”一位美国投资者坐在UES董事会上几年的美国投资者David Geovanis说。

Voloshin has little markets experience, and he seemed a bit at sea laying out the specifics of the financial center drive at the VTB conference this fall. “If we’ve waited 15 years to pursue this project, I guess we can wait a few more months to figure out what we are doing,” he said. But enthusiasts are counting on his backroom acumen to help push through the legal and regulatory reforms required under a 200-odd-page blueprint drawn up by Voskresensky’s colleagues at the Ministry of Economic Development in December 2009. The priorities include beefing up market infrastructure with new mechanisms for clearing and netting; increasing liquidity by making it easier to issue, securitize and repo stocks or bonds; and luring more foreign investors by eliminating special accounts for them and easing Russia’s devilish visa procedures.

一个重要的风扇是鲁本Aganbegyan,你好s banking career to head up Micex a few weeks after Voloshin took the financial center post. “To make the changes necessary within this organization, a lot of things need to change around it,” Aganbegyan tells II in an interview. “I thought this was something the government is committed to do.”

More than a year after “Russia, Forward!” Medvedev’s modernizing brain trust is managing to push through a steady stream of reforms. In September the Duma approved a law that exempts companies at Skolkovo from corporate profit, value-added and real estate levies. Next year the legislature will vote on measures to slash the social-needs payroll tax for all IT companies from 34 percent to 14 percent, eliminate capital gains taxes for private equity investments held more than five years and nix corporate income taxes for companies in health care and education.

Aganbegyan的宠物成就是最近在拥有超过20％的证券交易所的投资者禁止禁令。这有助于清除他的关键目标之一：MICEX与其竞争对手，俄罗斯贸易体系之间的合并，以及与国际交流运营商的联盟可能的锻造。

The subtle tide of change has encouraged veteran government liberals to go back on the offensive after years of increasingly autocratic rule. Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin has joined Medvedev adviser Dvorkovich in pushing a new privatization program to sell assets ranging from VTB, of which the government owns 86 percent, to wholly state-owned Russian Railways, and raise as much as $60 billion over the next five years. Talks between Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama in September ended a 17-year impasse over Russia’s WTO accession, which U.S. officials now expect to happen sometime in 2011. The WTO agreement has so far survived the scrutiny of congressional Republicans, who are refusing to ratify the START nuclear arms treaty that Obama signed with Russia in April.

Outside the economic complex, a key modernizer is Anton Ivanov, 45, a college classmate and onetime business partner of Medvedev’s who became chairman of the Supreme Arbitration Court, the country’s top commercial court, in 2005. Since his patron stepped up to the presidency, Ivanov has made a series of changes aimed at greater professionalism and transparency, ranging from creating a new patents court to bolster intellectual property rights to launching Presidium Online, a streaming service that will feature real-time Internet transmission of arbitration court cases starting next year.

所有这些不同的措施都会增加俄罗斯官方的大修，这些俄罗斯将收集力量，无论梅德韦杰夫自己的政治未来，Voskressky竞争。“人们喜欢在克里姆林宫和政府之间创造一个人为反对”，“他说，使用Insider的代码为Medvedev和Putin。“这与现实没有关系。我们都是一支球队。“

这个观点来自外部观察员的一些支持。“普京总是很清楚，他正在研究一个20年的发展计划，并在巩固控制后转向现代化，”投资银行乌拉尔斯布金融公司的首席战略师克里斯托弗·韦格斯（Christopher Weafer）表示，在莫斯科。“Medvedev是普京计划的第二阶段。”其他人更持怀疑态度，并相信改革将在没有梅德韦杰夫的情况下枯萎。“基本上，普京认为一切都在国内都是正确的，我们可以长时间继续在当前的课程中继续，”经济学家戈尔马克赫说。

In any case, Medvedev has created a situation where Putin’s dumping him would look like a crippling blow to modernization. So Kremlin watchers are dusting off their old podium-watching skills, squinting for signs of fissure in what is thought to be a genuine 20-year friendship between the president and the prime minister. “Medvedev does not want to fight with Putin, but some of his circle are pushing him to flex his muscles,” says Alexei Mukhin, director of the Center for Political Information in Moscow.

普京在58岁时，俄罗斯标准接近祖父的年龄，良性地看着他的较年轻的Protégé在Word and契约中提出了他的个人资料。Medvedev在10月份在他自己的总统期间在普京队的长期莫斯科市长举行了yuri luzhkov，在10月份迈出了一个大的政治步骤。Luzhkov的替代品Sergei Sobyanin，对国家领导人都有坚定的联系。普京·普京忠诚者副总理副总理，他还副主席，该委员会秘书长兼改革政策委员会德国德韦杰夫椅。在抗议森林毁灭的抗议后，总统今年夏天将自己与今年夏天的流行原因一致。这些抗议者引发了一种反弹，其中包括活动家的近乎致命的殴打以及支持反对派的记者。

Some Russian political observers doubt that Putin wants to be president again. He is said to be tired of the globe-trotting and ceremonial hobnobbing that post entails. Yet allowing Medvedev to have a second term — one extended to six years by a 2008 constitutional amendment — would likely spell the beginning of the end for Putin as ultimate power. “Vladimir Putin will not commit political suicide,” Mukhin declares. His personal scenario has Putin staying on as prime minister and picking a new, younger technocrat as president, while Medvedev accepts the consolation prize of heading the Russian court system and waging war on what he has famously called “legal nihilism.” Other analysts see Putin backing Medvedev for reelection and staying on as prime minister. Few see him yielding power entirely in 2012.

Even if Dmitry Medvedev were tsar, he would face a tough struggle forcing innovation and competitiveness upon an economy dominated by rent-seeking bureaucrats. Lack of necessity has bred a lack of invention among Russia’s elite, a complacency hard to shake with commodity prices rebounding from their postcrisis lows. “If you are getting so much money from oil and gas, there is no urgency to do anything else,” Troika’s Vardanian observes. Ordinary Russians remain traumatized by the chaos and falling living standards that marked the late 1980s and ’90s, and they crave a little peace and quiet. “Most of the people are against modernization,” economist Gontmakher admits. “It makes them fear for stability.”

Voskresensky会说，这正是他的团队的变化是故意连不下的原因。将LED照明在医院或销售俄罗斯铁路的物流子公司到投资者不会达到任何Babushka的生命。但转载了一千次，这可能为她的孙子孙女做出更好的国家。