The issue of “decentralization” of power and finances (away from Moscow to the regions) is currently a fairly hot agenda item. However, in my view, its strongest proponents are going to be disappointed by the result. This is not so much because of a lack of will by most people involved in examining and making decisions on this issue — but, by very practical impediments which would be there irrespective of who is president!

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The Strategy2020 team of Expert Groups is completing its final report for delivery in December. Initially commissioned by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, it now appears that Dimitri Medvedev – as future prime minister – will be taking the running on this issue even before he steps down from the presidency. The Expert Groups have been quite critical of a number of the policies pursued by Putin, both as president and prime minister, and many of their ideas seem closer to those of Medvedev. But Medvedev is now in a much weaker political and psychological position than before announcing his decision. Putin now has the uncontested upper hand, even before legally assuming the presidency, so I am not sure that it makes much difference which one of them is the “curator” of the Strategy2020 project. 

Moreover, policy making is not on hold while this document is being finalized. The two most notable related issues reported last week were about “Free Economic Zones” and the possibility of the return of sales tax. 

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Anatoly Sobchak, the reformist mayor of Saint Petersburg with whom Vladimir Putin worked after he left the KGB in 1990, once suggested that Putin might be Russia’s Napoleon Bonaparte. And, in a sense Sobchak was right, and much of what I wrote in March 2000 in this article has occurred:

http://www.jeffschubert.com/index.php?id=20

Now, in order to justify his impending return to the presidency, Putin has invoked the cases of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Charles De Gaulle and Helmut Kohl as men who held power for a long time and who have been treated quite well by history – in contrast to Russia’s own Leonid Brezhnev.

Dmitry Peskov, his press secretary has said: “Putin reads all the time, mostly about the history of Russia. He reads memoirs, the memoirs of Russian historical state figures.”

This is dangerous reading!

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