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Consider the four main goals of Strategy 2020:
1. Increase per capita gross domestic product to $30,000 from its current $15,800 based on purchasing-power parity. Although it is difficult to compare developed economies with developing ones, it took Canada 28 years, Britain 24 years, Japan 27 years and the United States 35 years (in 1985) to double their per capita GDPs. True, if you look at China, a BRIC country, it was able to double its per capita GDP income (to $6,000) in less time, but China had average GDP growth of more than 10 percent over the past decade (its "crisis growth" in 2009 is expected to be 8 percent!), while Russia's growth rate has been much lower for this period. It would be more appropriate to look at Brazil, another BRIC country, since its profile matches Russia's more closely. It took Brazil 21 years to double its per capita GDP in 2008. How will Russia reach this same goal in only 11 years, particularly when you consider that it will need a minimum of four years (by the most conservative estimates) just to climb back to pre-crisis growth and employment levels?
2. Increase life expectancy to 75 years. This doesn't require any doubling, but it still requires a significant increase over the country's current life expectancy of 66 years. The only way this goal can be reached is if Russia is able to bring its health care system up to Western standards by 2020 and if the majority of Russians are able to change their unhealthy lifestyles.
3. Increase the middle class to 60 percent of the population. This is a tricky one since it depends on how you define "middle class." Russia often uses a monthly income of 15,000 rubles ($454) as a starting point. True, every country has its own definition of a "middle-class lifestyle," but 15,000 rubles is a stretch any way you look at it, particularly considering Russia's chronically high inflation.
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Once the crisis passes, what would it take for Russia to replace France in the No. 5 spot? If France's economy grows at a modest 2.5 percent annually, Russia's economy would need to grow by 9 percent per year to close the gap. But even in the best oil-boom years from 2004 to 2008, Russia's real GDP growth averaged only about 7 percent annually.
A key factor regarding these economic goals is the need to improve the labor productivity among Russian workers, which has traditionally been significantly lower in comparison to other industrial powers. The automobile manufacturing sector is a vivid example. According to Avtostat analytical agency, one Russian autoworker produces only 2.5 passenger cars, whereas in Japan, one autoworker produces 16 cars in the same time period; in the United States -- 11.3 cars per worker; and in Europe on average -- 9 cars per worker.
But the most important ranking is not mentioned in Strategy 2020 at all -- the Transparency International's corruption index, in which Russia ranks 147 out of 180 countries in 2008. Corruption is particularly suffocating for Russia's struggling small and medium-size businesses, which make up only 10 percent to 15 percent of the country's GDP. In the United States, small and medium-size businesses are the engine of economic growth, comprising roughly 50 percent of the country's private GDP and creating about two-thirds of net new jobs annually.
As long as Russian bureaucrats (and competitors) are free to terrorize businesses by creating "administrative barriers," extorting bribes and raiding, economic growth in the real sector will always be insignificant. To his credit, President Dmitry Medvedev is backing a new law to assist small businesses, which will, among other things, limit the number of government inspections of businesses. (Most likely, however, these limitations will be easily sidestepped when bureaucrats simply extort a larger amount of money per inspection.) After the global economic crisis blows over, Russia has a lot of potential to grow by 2020, particularly if it can develop what Prime Minister Vladimir Putin calls its wealth of "human capital." But for this to happen, entrepreneurs, scientists and other innovators must be free to be creative and innovative -- above all, they must be free from stifling administrative barriers and corruption.
To be sure, many Russians already consider Russia to be a very desirable place -- without Shuvalov's help. And this is also true for foreigners, including the editors and reporters of this newspaper, who voluntarily choose to live and work in this country. But for those who don't believe this to be true, even the most advanced Kremlin propaganda will do little to make Russia more desirable. To rephrase a Russian expression, no matter how many times the Kremlin PR machine repeats the word "halva," it won't make Russia any sweeter.
Kremlin myth-making has a rich tradition, dating back to the very beginning of the Soviet Union. When British writer H.G. Wells met with Lenin in 1920 in the Kremlin, he learned of Lenin's utopian 10-year plan to create wonders out of a country very much still in ruins in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war. In Wells' book "Russia in the Shadows," which includes an account of this visit, he called Lenin "The Kremlin Dreamer."
Shuvalov's vision of Russia 2020 is also eerily reminiscent of Nikita Khrushchev's grandiose promise that he made at the 1961 Communist Party congress: that full-blown communism -- defined roughly in terms of a U.S.-style middle-class standard of living for every Soviet citizen -- would be achieved in 1980. As the old joke went, instead of communism in 1980, the Soviet people got the Olympic Games for two weeks and the Afghanistan war for nine more years.
United Russia and the government should adjust Strategy 2020 to make it more realistic -- and less heroic in the Soviet Stakhanovite tradition. Perhaps U.S. President Barack Obama could serve as a good example. He has done a lot to modify U.S. ambitions after the disastrous mistakes of President George W. Bush and after the humbling impact that the financial crisis has had on U.S. hubris. And Obama was able to do this with dignity.
Russia's leaders should try to do the same, and it can start by cutting every Strategy 2020 goal in half. This probably should have been done before the crisis, but it is even more compelling now. Surprisingly, even the notoriously pessimistic Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who has repeatedly warned about a long and difficult recovery from the crisis, has not called for Strategy 2020 to be reviewed.
In addition, a new crucial goal to Strategy 2020 should be added: to improve Russia's corruption ranking to 100 from 147. To be sure, this would be no easy task. No Russian tsar, general secretary or president has been able to significantly curb corruption, but perhaps Medvedev's anti-corruption program has the teeth to at least improve the country's global corruption ranking.
Although Russians often say that it doesn't hurt to dream, feeding people myths is just as dangerous now as it was during the Soviet period. It is hard to believe that after 73 years of Soviet utopian slogans, superheroic five- and 10-year plans and empty promises, the Kremlin has essentially returned to spinning the same fairy tales again. The Kremlin should remind itself that the ridiculous Soviet myths and unfulfilled promises, which made Soviet leaders the laughing stock of the world, did more to discredit, undermine and ultimately bury the Communist Party and the Soviet Union than a million dissidents (or even the CIA) could ever do.
When Shuvalov was a young teenager in the late Brezhnev years, he, like every other Soviet citizen, listened to the Communist patriotic song about heroic Soviet achievements -- "Мы рождены, чтоб сказку сделать былью" ("We were born to turn fairy tales into reality"). It was a national favorite on radio airwaves and sung at summer camps and during holidays. Although that was 30 years ago, I have a secret suspicion that Shuvalov is still humming this tune on his way to work.
Fairy tales are wonderful, but they should be read to children. They have no place in Strategy 2020.
Michael Bohm is the opinion page editor of The Moscow Times.
