HOW DO YOU SLAY A DRAGON?

The conclusion is simple: we have to follow both paths. We have to train our own people where we can and as thoroughly as we can; but while they’re training we mustn’t be too afraid or embarrassed to hire foreigners. If we wish quickly to change the quality of the civil service in Russia, we have to open the door to foreign specialists. Of course, we must put in place sensible safeguards, but I can see no other solution today, especially in those areas where there’s virtually no home-grown experience. In any case, we’re not talking about huge numbers of people. I believe that we would need between 3,000 and 5,000 specialists in the central structures, and half that number in the regions. But we mustn’t repeat the mistakes made under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. We have to invite genuinely the best professional managers and not “the boys from Chicago”. We have to hire the most progressive managers from international corporations and government structures all over the world, those who have practical, not just theoretical experience of management. We must give them the chance to work for us and teach those who’ll be working alongside them. I suggest that this will take about five years, ten at the most.

If we want quality, we have to be prepared to pay for it – both our own people and the foreigners. We must offer sufficiently high salaries, so that we can demand what we want from them, including total honesty. We’ll have to pay the foreigners more. But Russia is a sufficiently wealthy country that we can afford to employ in our service not simply the best from among 140 million, but the best from a few billion, selecting them on an individual basis. This, incidentally, takes great skill, and we shall also have to seek the assistance of true professionals to take part in the search. I have my own experience which I’m prepared to share. When I had to turn YUKOS into a leading international company, the foreigners whom I invited to join us were paid more than I was. Then, of course, I recouped the costs when it came to paying dividends. But that was much later. At first, we had a great deal to learn. And we paid well for this knowledge. There is no alternative.

To sum up, I repeat again that a comprehensive administrative reform of the civil service is an issue that brooks no delay. It must be a priority for whatever government comes after the Putin regime. The aim of this reform (that incidentally was one that Putin himself called a priority, and was one of his first total failures) is to turn an archaic, semi-Soviet, semi-feudal state structure into a modern system of management. In essence, Russia has to start from scratch to create a civil service independent of both politics and business. And in order to get it right, we need once again to do what we’ve done many times before in our history and invite into the Russian state service foreigners who have the necessary knowledge and experience. Incidentally, this will be easier for us to do than it was for our ancestors. The Putin regime has forced tens of thousands of talented people out of the country. These people have gained invaluable experience in Western corporations, and in the right circumstances can return to their Motherland.

Chapter 10. What’s Meant by “a Turn to the Left”:

a Welfare State or a Socialist State?

I’ve had a great deal of time to think about mistakes – both the ones I’ve made and other peoples’. But it didn’t take me long to find the greatest of them. Back in 2004, when I was contemplating how it was that we – and I personally – had ended up where we were, I wrote the first version of “A Turn to the Left”. At that time, this title may have seemed a little odd. You may think that a man who had been able to make use of all the advantages that the market economy gave to enterprising people would have been just the person to write about a turn to the right (in the economic sense). But long before my row with Putin’s regime crossed over to its open and acute phase, I had understood clearly that for Russia, with its history, its mentality and its traditions, a right-leaning, liberal policy would lead it into a complete dead-end. I still hold to this view today, fifteen years after that first article saw the light of day.