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ing that you cannot simply rely on your
traditional assets and habits. You have
to change your mindset, allow greater
space for individual initiative. The natural
instinct of the Russian state is to control
everything. But it needs to allow much
greater autonomy and freedom to release
people’s creative energies.In a sense, Russia has painted itself into
a corner.
There is what I call Russia’s mod-
ernisation dilemma, which is akin to a
Catch-22 situation. On the one hand,
to remain a great power in the 21st cen-
tury Russia needs to dispose of different
forms of influence. It cannot just rely
on its traditional advantages. On the
other hand, to achieve modernisation
the regime would have to fundamentally
change the system of political relations
and governance. This will be extremely
difficult and there will be costs and vic-
tims; the regime could lose legitimacy
and even fall. So it is a really difficult
choice. The question is will the regime
muddle on and postpone a decision on
modernisation until it is too late, or will
it show some vision?Is there any indication that this vision
could be somewhere in the Kremlin?
You see signs of this vision in the new
economic strategy. And in the new for-
eign policy recommendations put out by
the Russian International Affairs Coun-
cil, which is associated with the foreign
ministry. Dmitri Trenin, director of the
Carnegie Moscow Center, has writtenabout how Russia needs to make some
big political and economic changes. The
fact that there is some debate about this
is positive. But in Russia, they are famous
for having great ideas, formulating the
most perfect policies and then never im-
plementing them. So we will have to see
what is actually done.March 2018 will the next presidential
election in Russia. What do you expect we
will see during the campaign and election?
Obviously Putin is staying for at least an-
other six years...
For Putin, it is important to achieve
minimum result of 70/70 – 70 per cent
turnout and 70 per cent victory in the
first round. Seventy is a good figure
because it shows that he is very popu-
lar – most western politicians could only
dream of 70 per cent support. But it is
also low enough to be more or less cred-
ible. It is not like North Korea or Central
Asian states where the leader gets nearly
99 per cent of the vote. Putin wants to
demonstrate that Russia has a function-
ing democracy, that he is very popular
and that the Russian people subscribe to
his vision of a strong, resurgent Russia.
I believe that Putin wants 2018 to be
a popular re-affirmation of his personal
legitimacy and of Putinism more gener-
ally. He will likely campaign on nation-
al consolidation and the restoration of
Russian national pride, and project him-
self as the visionary statesman, creating
a new and better Russia. There will also
be a lot of talk about modernisation.
Modernisation has become a dirty wordInterviews Russia is unprepared for the next world order, Interviewer: Adam Reichardt