#7 - JRL 2009-171 - JRL Home
Medvedev Urges More Transparency For Russia's Home Policy - Analyst [Zlobin]
Sept 14 (Interfax) - A Russian-American political scientist credited Russian President Dmitry Medvedev with carrying out "a revolution in Russian political thinking" by insisting on greater international transparency for Russia's home policy in a speech on Monday.
In his speech at the "Modern State and Global Security" conference in Yaroslavl, Medvedev advocated something that until quite recently "was called interference in internal affairs," Nikolai Zlobin, director of the Russia and Eurasia Project at the Washington-based World Security Institute, told Interfax.
"Dmitry Medvedev said a very important thing, something that many didn't notice.
He carried out a revolution in Russian political thinking by saying that we need to take a critical attitude to the domestic policies of other states and monitor them," Zlobin said.
Medvedev argued that nations should know as much as possible about one another "and have the right to make critical assessments of not only the foreign but also the domestic policies of one another, and maybe point to the shortcomings of such policies if the latter may lead to problems on an international scale," the political scientist said.
"Until recently this was called interference in internal affairs, including interference in the internal affairs of Russia.
Today the Russia president says that this can and must be done.
I believe this is a very serious change if it gets any political formalization," Zlobin said.
The director of the Russian Institute for Public Projects, Valery Fadeyev, said that, in his speech, Medvedev set forth guidelines for a world order that he believes "would be looking into the post-crisis future," and "undoubtedly into a democratic future as well."
The Yaroslavl conference showed that Russia is initiating debates on serious global problems but so far at intellectual rather than political level, Fadeyev said.
The president of Russia's Effective Policy Foundation, Gleb Pavlovsky, expressed confidence that the Yaroslavl conference was the first in what would be regular forums.
"It has been thought up as a floor for the mutual adjustment of standards of modern democracy and standards of civilized modern behavior on the part of states, as an informal debate on international architecture and Russian democracy," Pavlovsky told Interfax.
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