"We need to build a more diverse and dynamic economy, based on innovation and entrepreneurship"
About this Quote
A Russian president praising “innovation and entrepreneurship” is never just talking about startups. Medvedev’s line is a deliberately modern-sounding incantation aimed at a very old problem: an economy chained to oil, gas, and the political habits that come with resource dependence. “Diverse and dynamic” signals more than GDP mix; it’s a coded critique of stagnation, a promise that Russia can be something other than a petrostate with a few strategic industries guarded by the state and its favored oligarchs.
The phrasing is managerial and future-facing, borrowing the global language of Davos panels and Silicon Valley keynotes. That’s the point. Medvedev, long cast as the technocratic “modernizer” in Putin’s orbit, uses this vocabulary to project competence, openness, and international legitimacy. It reassures investors and the urban middle class while sidestepping the harder sentence he doesn’t say: innovation thrives on rule of law, independent courts, freer media, and a predictable state that doesn’t change the terms after you succeed.
“Based on innovation and entrepreneurship” also smuggles in a political aim. Entrepreneurship disperses power; it creates winners outside the state’s patronage networks. In the Russian context, that’s both an economic strategy and a controlled experiment in pluralism. The subtext is aspiration under constraint: yes to modern capitalism, but preferably the kind that can be steered, branded, and kept from becoming politically autonomous.
The line works because it’s optimistic without being committal. It offers a horizon broad enough for everyone to applaud, and vague enough that no one can invoice the Kremlin for delivery.
The phrasing is managerial and future-facing, borrowing the global language of Davos panels and Silicon Valley keynotes. That’s the point. Medvedev, long cast as the technocratic “modernizer” in Putin’s orbit, uses this vocabulary to project competence, openness, and international legitimacy. It reassures investors and the urban middle class while sidestepping the harder sentence he doesn’t say: innovation thrives on rule of law, independent courts, freer media, and a predictable state that doesn’t change the terms after you succeed.
“Based on innovation and entrepreneurship” also smuggles in a political aim. Entrepreneurship disperses power; it creates winners outside the state’s patronage networks. In the Russian context, that’s both an economic strategy and a controlled experiment in pluralism. The subtext is aspiration under constraint: yes to modern capitalism, but preferably the kind that can be steered, branded, and kept from becoming politically autonomous.
The line works because it’s optimistic without being committal. It offers a horizon broad enough for everyone to applaud, and vague enough that no one can invoice the Kremlin for delivery.
Quote Details
| Topic | Entrepreneur |
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