What does Russia Think?
Edited by Ivan Krastev, Mark Leonard and Andrew Wilson
Preface
The essays in this volume are collected from the conference "What Does Russia Think?" held in Moscow from 29 June to 3 July 2009, which was organized by the Russian Institute and the Centre for Liberal Strategies in co-operation with the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
The conference invited high level thinkers from Europe and America to hear leading Russian intellectuals explain Russia’s priorities at frst hand and acquaint themselves with offcial Russian thinking without intermediation or the interpretation of Western or Russian media. The collection does not claim to represent the whole spectrum of opinion in today’s Russia, but we hope it is a good guide to "what the Kremlin thinks" on three key sets of issues: the Russian political system and the role played in it by Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev; the economic crisis and how it affects Russia’s plans for modernization; and Russia’s role in the world in the light of President Medvedev’s call for a new European Security Treaty.