New Organization to Be Set Up to Tackle Russia's Modernization
December 8 (Interfax) -- Former Yabloko leader Grigori Yavlinksi, Chief Editor of the magazine "Svobodnaya Mysl" (Free Thought) Vyacheslav Inozemtsev, and Business Russia leader Boris Titov will set up a public organization that will prepare a program aimed at the country's modernization, Titov has said, as quoted by Russian news agency Interfax on 8 December.
"The country is gradually rolling down into the raw-material-economy model. We cannot wait any longer. If the authorities themselves are unwilling to develop this [modernization] strategy, it should be done for them," Titov told journalists, as quoted by the agency.
Titov said the first version of the modernization plan may be ready by June 2010 and as for the new organization, a council will first be set up that will gather for its first session right after the New Year holidays. The council will bear the name Zamodernizatsiyu.ru and a corresponding domain has already been registered, Titov reported.
In a later report, Titov was quoted as saying that he was not thinking of leaving the ranks of the Right Cause party, although he did have contradictions with the other two co-leaders, Leonid Gozman and Georgi Bovt. Moreover, he was going to give the other two leaders some time to let them show what they were capable of. "Do whatever you want, but show what you are capable of. To be honest, I have not seen any breakthrough in terms of positioning the party or its work with voters. In my opinion, the party is just losing votes," he said.
RF Scientists to Discuss Economic Modernization, Anti-Crisis Steps
MOSCOW, December 7 (Itar-Tass) - Modernization of the Russian economy and ways of overcoming the effects of the global crisis are the main issues under discussion at the Russian Economic Congress (REC) that is opening in Moscow on Monday. It will be held until December 12 at Moscow State University (MGU) under the aegis of the New Economic Association and Economics Section of the Public Science Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAN).
During the week, plenary sessions and over 60 roundtables will be held at MGU. Special events are organised for young economists. A special conference named "World Economic Crisis" will also be held. More than 1,000 leading scientists working at RAN institutes, research centers, and universities all around the country plan to take part in the REC. A total of 1,323 reports have been registered.
It will be the first economic forum of such a scale, Vice President of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Nekipelov noted. In his view, it could be comparable to the annual congresses of US economists.
"Our task is to develop normal, professional, businesslike relations among people who work in the same sphere and seek to get objective knowledge," stressed Academician Nekipelov, who is chairman of the REC-2009 organizing committee. "At the congress, we are planning to make a kind of inventory of what Russian researchers have done in the economic science sphere," he said.
The congress will become "a serious intellectual event" for Russia, says Director of the Institute of Economics, RAN Corresponding Member Ruslan Grinberg. He stressed that the REC-2009 will have an aim to "show that the economy is science, and not guesswork. We should show an assortment of various views and form zones of consensus in the assessment of that or other events."
The names of the moderators of subject-related conferences tell about the scope and authority of the economic forum. Among them are noted academics Nikolai Petrakov, Nikolai Shmelev, Valery Makarov, Alexander Grinberg, Sergei Glazyev, Alexander Dynkin, Viktor Sadovnichy, Viktor Polterovich, Alexander Nekipelov, and other economists. Many well-known foreign specialists have also been registered at the congress.
The REC roundtables will focus on the current global economic crisis and search for ways to overcome it. The announced discussion topics, such as "Mechanisms for Minimizing the Global Financial Crisis's Effects on the Russian Economy" and "Experiences of the Anti-Crisis Policy: Lessons for Russia"- and the like, testify to this.
The REC opening ceremony will be held at the MGU Fundamental Library assembly hall. It is planned to hold the REC once every three years.
