In September 2004, the Russian city of Novgorod hosted an international conference entitled Russia at the Turn of the Century: Hopes and Reality. Its organizers were the RIA Novosti news agency, the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Russia in Global Affairs, and The Moscow Times. The list of participants included leading scholars, experts and journalists from the U.S. and European countries, who met to discuss the level of Russia’s political, social and economic development that has been achieved since the introduction of democratic processes 15 years ago. This review presents a synopsis of the views provided by the Russian participants in the forum and offers a general account of their opinions.

Sergei Karaganov, Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and Chairman of the Russia in Global Affairs Editorial Board, said Russia had fallen short of both the most optimistic and most pessimistic forecasts that the experts forwarded at the start of the reforms. What is most important is that a totally new reality has emerged in the country, he said.

Dr Alexei Salmin, President of the Russian Social Political Center, opened the discussion on Russia’s domestic policy by focusing attention on the transformations that are yet to come. People without the slightest amount of Soviet experience will join the economically active sections of society in just several years from now. While these individuals possess no experience of the Soviet past, they do have abounding experience with Russia’s imperfect democracy into which they were born. This fact may have variegated consequences, ranging from a willingness to turn Russia into a model democracy, to attempts to thwart any form of democracy in principle. The commencement of their participation in economic life will coincide with the 2008 presidential election. At this time, the problem of a cohesion between the current and future political course may acquire a dramatic taint, while the change of power will mark a tense and dangerous moment.

MP Vladimir Ryzhkov, who represents the liberal opposition in the lower house of Russian parliament, said he was confident that the country’s democratic system had been dismantled during the years since Vladimir Putin’s election to the presidential office. All the independent institutions that would ensure the plurality of opinions and balance of powers in the 1990s – the upper and lower houses of parliament, independent deputies, the powerful regional governors, political parties, independent mass media, and independent big business – have been cut down to size. “We’re offered an array of hollow democratic institutions having facades but void of real content,” Ryzhkov said. “This is a road to disaster, to the country’s collapse.”

MP Andrei Klimov, a member of the pro-presidential United Russia party, disagreed with Ryzhkov, saying that much of what was happening today was part of putting things into order and repairing the mechanism that had been shattered during Yeltsin’s presidency. He charged Yeltsin with leaving Putin with an unstable political system that was in disarray, and a feeble, undemocratic state that was dependent on numerous factors. Klimov admitted at the same time that some of the recent proposals for the consolidation of power might actually aggravate particular problems as opposed to solving them.

MP Konstantin Kosachev, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the State Duma, offered the opinion that Russia – for the first time in its recent history – has acquired clear political personification, represented by President Putin and the United Russia party which has taken full responsibility for the situation. What the country also needs, Kosachev said, is a government that is formed along the party principle.

The problem concerning the centralization of state power sparked an animated discussion, with writer Alexander Prokhanov arguing that Russia as a country, and the Russians as an ethnos, are living through a disaster. The population is dwindling, huge territories remain undeveloped, and culture and science are degrading, he said. “Russia has come to the brink of something bigger than disintegration – it can be absorbed by powerful nationalities moving in from the East and South,” Prokhanov said. He pins hopes for Russia’s salvation solely on the tough centralization of state power.

Novgorod Region Governor Mikhail Prusak supported the idea of suppressing petty regional separatism, but spoke against the centralization of financial flows and economic powers. “Western civic society grew out of the economic freedom of the land and the economic freedom of each particular man,” he said.

Political analyst Vitaly Tretyakov highlighted the fact that liberal democratic reforms in Russia had always led to the disintegration of the government, state, and its territory. In the meantime, historic experience shows that the Russians treasure those territories, and maintaining them is a kind of a Russian national imperative.

Dmitry Trenin, Deputy Director of the Moscow Carnegie Center, said the problem of Russian democracy was deeply rooted in the absence of demos and of a responsible and conscientious choice of voters, rather than in authoritarianism. “Russia has moved from the phase of Yeltsin’s revolution to the phase of stabilization,” he said. “It has reverted to its organic path of development, from which it was knocked off in 1917.”

Russia’s chief ombudsman Vladimir Lukin developed the subject of post-revolutionary stabilization during the next session of the forum, where the participants discussed humanitarian issues. Following the end of a revolution, society must readjust itself to a different way of life and this process of adjustment usually takes a long time. This phase often implies ceding some gains of the revolutionary epoch. Such is the law of development, Lukin said.

Georgy Bovt, Chief Editor of the Izvestia daily, believes Russian society is generally insufficiently developed – it cannot speak articulately and does not know how to formulate or perceive many things, and that is why it would be most productive to begin with the words and ideas easily understandable for society. The authority’s inability to speak a language clear to the people is especially detrimental today.

Alexander Prokhanov criticized the ideology that dominates in Russia at the moment. He called it “an incendiary mix of neo-liberalism in foreign policy and economics and a quasi-imperial sugary approach in internal affairs.” “Enlightened centralism” can only be developed as a national idea if all the ideologies found in Russian society (e.g. ultra-right, liberal, super-conservative, religious or even extremist) fuse into one ideological compound, he said.

Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief of Russia in Global Affairs, discussed Russia’s position in the international arena during the session which focused on foreign policy. He pointed out the widening gap between President Putin’s clearly pro-Western foreign policy course, and the model of internal relations that is definitely drifting away from exemplary Western democracies. This creates apparent problems for Russia’s strategy of becoming integrated into the community of developed countries, which the President has declared more than once.

Konstantin Kosachev said many of the problems that Russia faces on the international scene have psychological roots, which are a combination of the superiority mania and inferiority complexes embedded in the Russian consciousness. “We’d like to rehabilitate the past glory of the Soviet state, and yet shy away from stating Russia’s genuine interests,” he said. “We pull back too soon if we hear the accusations of cruelty and imperialism. Countries of the world will always respect one another’s interests, but Russia must formulate its interests for itself. All of our setbacks in foreign policy will continue to be linked to a failure to understand our national interests, as well as the plans for implementing them.”

MP Yuli Kvitsinsky, one of today’s most widely known Russian diplomats, voiced doubts about the ostensible strengthening of the country’s international positions in the past few years. “The time that it requires for a NATO missile to reach Moscow and St. Petersburg has shrunk to the minimum, and all of the [European] Russian territory up to the Urals has fallen within the range of tactical weapons from other countries,” he said. “This should have led us to urgent practical conclusions.” Yuli Kvitsinsky recalled that NATO statements about friendship with the Russians are nothing more than unbinding declarations. Should the situation change, says Yuli Kvitsinsky, Russia will be unprepared to rebuff the enemy.

Dmitry Trenin called for looking at NATO as an opportunity, not a threat. “It may have the role of Russia’s important strategic rear and a resource for modernizing the Russian Armed Forces,” he said. “The same applies to the European Union as well, because it can become an external lever of our internal modernization.”

Another factor that sparks Kvitsinsky’s alarm is the absence of a clear policy line toward the CIS countries, where he believes new impressive methods of influence, together with the promotion of Russian interests, are needed.

Fyodor Lukyanov supported the above viewpoint, saying: “Russia’s problem in the post-Soviet countries is similar to America’s problem across the world.” America is powerful, but it lacks soft power, that is, an ability to convince others to side with it, he said. “Russia needs a powerful cultural and civilizational campaign to promote itself to its neighbors.”

Konstantin Kosachev admitted that Russia’s conduct toward its neighbors resembled that of a bull in a china shop. “Ironically, being a small nation is a lucrative business in today’s world. If you are one, you can harass, or even become aggressive, against your big neighbors, because the world community won’t let them touch you,” he said.

Relations with the West were mulled over at a session devoted to security issues. The Russian participants complained that the West supports Russia’s fighting with terrorism only in words and refuses to give it practical assistance.

MP Andrei Kokoshin, Chairman of the State Duma’s Committee on CIS Affairs, underlined the huge gap between the interaction of the world’s leading countries, and the scope of the challenges that arise from the nature of the new threats. “The U.S. action in Iraq, which provoked an upsurge of radicalism in the Islamic world, together with the Russian-American misunderstanding in the post-Soviet space, do not serve to bring cooperation to the required levels for fighting terrorism,” Kokoshin said. He recalled World War II, when countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and the U.S. managed to put their claims aside and pool their efforts in the fight against the Nazis.

“Like it was during that war, Russia is now offered again to bear the major burden of a war with terrorism,” said Vitaly Tretyakov, expounding on the same topic. “The West remains reluctant to consider Chechnya as a part of the problem it faces, too.”

Vagif Guseinov, Director of the Institute for Strategic Assessments and Analysis, called everyone’s attention to the well-planned and coordinated methods of the enemy forces back in 1994, when the war in Chechnya just started. The enemy was neither disunited nor scattered then, and this should not be overlooked. Guseinov admitted, however, that even the Russians did not understand it well enough at the time. He highlighted one more problem: the people whom the Russian authorities select to monitor the problems of the Caucasus generally have a vague idea of that unique region’s specificity.

Vitaly Tretyakov sharply criticized Western demands that Russia make compromise agreements with the separatists. “To grant independence to Chechnya and to make whatever arrangements with Maskhadov will spark similar events in Ingushetia, as well as elsewhere in the North Caucasus,” he indicated. “This will ignite a grand Caucasus war, in which Georgia and Armenia will be swept away as states. After that, Russia will begin falling apart up the Volga where there is a large Moslem population.”

Andrei Kokoshin made reference to the period of 1996 through 1999, when an agreement with Maskhadov was in effect and Chechnya was independent de facto. During this time, violent incidents continued to occur in the republic and on the adjoining territories, but Maskhadov was unable to control even his own people. Compared to the days when the Chechen Republic was ruled by militant Islamic radicals, today’s situation there is much better, Kokoshin believes. He also mentioned that it is thanks to Russia that secular regimes have stayed afloat in the Central Asian countries, primarily in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.