EXPECTATIONS were high last week as Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister and the informal leader of a moderate liberal camp in the Russian establishment, outlined his proposed economic programme in a packed Moscow auditorium. Russia’s top economic officials occupied the front row. Foreign ambassadors sat behind. Journalists stood in the aisles. The setting was the Gaidar Forum, a symposium named after the architect of Russia’s market reforms in the 1990s. The date, Friday the 13th, was perhaps unfortunate.
Nine months ago, as Russia’s recession deepened, Vladimir Putin drafted Mr Kudrin to come up with a new economic strategy. The former minister, who oversaw strong economic growth in the early 2000s, resigned in 2011 in protest against a massive increase in military spending. Since then he has acquired cult-like status among Russian liberals. A personal friend of Mr Putin, he is a counterweight to the hardliners of Russia’s security services, and has stayed inside the system rather than becoming a dissident. Although he holds no formal position, he is seen as the most senior liberal courtier in the Byzantine world of the...Continue reading
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