OREANDA-NEWS. November 29, 2012. Question: You’ve been Prime Minister for six months now. We can safely say that the organising phrase of forming the Government is over. Earlier you had outlined seven priority areas of the Government’s work including in the short term. What have you been able to resolve at this stage and what issues remain unresolved?

Dmitry Medvedev: It would be absurd for me to claim that we have resolved almost every issue after just six months in office. I think that it is important for the Government to begin its work as a full-fledged team with a common agenda. In these six months, my colleagues and I, as a Prime Minister, have sought to create a common platform for our work. And I think we have succeeded in this respect.

This does not mean that everyone in the Government holds the same opinions. It is absolutely normal for Government members to have different points of view on certain issues. My position is simple: an issue should be discussed as candidly and thoroughly as possible before a decision is taken. Once a decision has been taken, all discussion comes to an end, and this decision must be carried out. If somebody doesn’t like the decision, they can criticise it, but they will have to do so from their new job.

As for the Government’s goals, they are to have a normal, modern and competitive economy, to improve people’s lives, to increase their income and to improve living standards. These are the goals of every Government, even one operating in a period of crisis.

Question: Do you still think we are in a crisis?

Dmitry Medvedev: Currently we are not in a crisis. Rather, we are in the calm before the storm. This fact has helped shape our work over the past six months. I recall how I started my work as Prime Minister. After the President had signed his executive orders, I summoned all Government members and told them that we have practical tasks to address. 

First, we must approve state programmes. I believed then and I believe now that a programme-based approach should be the foundation for drafting the budget. The second issue was the approval of the budget for 2013 and the three-year budget period. Third – issues related to social development, increasing benefits for some categories of citizens according to earlier decisions. Fourth – reforming the civil service. Fifth – working with the expert community in the Open Government. Sixth – privatisation. Seventh – to implement the measures envisioned by the roadmaps of the national business initiative as soon as possible, so as to improve the investment climate.

It is not for me to judge our successes and failures. I can only say that we have made progress in all these areas. At the next Government meeting, we will analyse what has been done in the past six months.

Question: Mr Medvedev, next year you will unveil the programme for the Government’s work until March 2018. What will be the priorities?

Dmitry Medvedev: I don’t want to unveil the programme ahead of time, work on it continues. You can’t expect me to announce something that doesn’t exist right now. In my view, we must staunchly defend the values that our country has suffered for, so to speak. 

This is not always easy. Everything seems so clear when you talk in generalities. But once you wade into the details, everything becomes much more complicated. For example, privatisation. Is this a value or simply a mechanism for selling off public property? I came to a conclusion that privatisation in Russia is not merely the transfer of property from the state to private ownership. It is an ideologeme that creates a vector for national development, it leads to efficient proprietors, it means that we are not building an economy under state control, state capitalism.

Yes, the Government’s work always boils down to a set of compromises. As such, it is all the more important that the programme for its work include value-based guideposts. And the programme will have them.