Please note that this event on the Russian Economy has been cancelled.  We will send an e-mail notification if this event is rescheduled for a later date.

In 2003, on the heels of an incredible economic recovery, Russian president Vladimir Putin pledged to double Russia’s GDP within a decade. Buoyed by high energy prices and steadily growing at around 7 percent a year, Russia’s economy is still on pace to fulfill this prediction. All of the country’s foreign debts have been paid off; gold and currency reserves stand at $300 billion; and another $100 billion has accrued from windfall oil profits in the country’s Stabilization Fund, created to soften the blow when oil prices go down.

Yet growth in domestic product and currency reserves has run parallel to the consolidation of power in the Kremlin, persistent corruption, abandonment of long-term structural reforms, and a campaign to recapture what Lenin called the “commanding heights of the economy.” The final dismemberment of oil giant YUKOS began last month, with the state-owned Rosneft oil company emerging victorious in the four-minute auction. Despite the widely publicized implementation of the “national projects” by the Kremlin, the share of GDP spending for health care and education has not improved since the 1990s, while the pension reform remains incomplete.

Will Russian voters support the Kremlin’s model of governance in the key December 2007 parliamentary elections and the 2008 presidential contest? How does the shift in ideology affect perspectives for long-term growth and foreign investment? Can Russia avoid the “resource curse,” when countries’ economies are hurt by dependence on lucrative natural resources?

On April 25, Yegor Gaidar, former prime minister of the Russian Federation and architect of Russia’s liberal market reforms, and a distinguished group of leading Russia scholars will address these and other questions.