PRESS RELEASE
Medvedev, APEC Meeting
Reflect Four-Power Shift
Nov. 16, 2009 (EIRNS)—In his annual State of the Nation message on Nov. 12, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev insisted on critical themes that have been at the center of Russia's new collaboration with China, and of the prospects of Russia playing a pivotal role in what Lyndon LaRouche has identified as the Four Power alliance needed to defeat the power of the London-centered global financial oligarchy.
The Russian President devoted an entire section of his address to Russia's expanded role in state-of-the-art nuclear power, including a new generation of nuclear plants, and of fuels, and collaboration with other nations on thermonuclear fusion research. On scientific research, he quoted French scientist Louis Pasteur, who said that "Science must be the most elevated incarnation of the Fatherland."
As Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has done repeatedly over the past period, Medvedev focused on the need for the Russian economy to be based on technological and scientific innovation, rather than raw materials extraction for export.
The nation's prestige and national prosperity cannot be upheld forever by the achievements of the past. Oil and gas production, which provides a large share of the budget revenues; nuclear weapons that guarantee our security, industrial and communal infrastructure—this was all to a large degree, created by Soviet specialists. In other words, we didn't create them. The time has come for us, the current generation of Russians, to make its voice heard; to raise Russia to a higher level of civilization. The well-being of Russia in the near future will depend on whether it will be successful in developing ideas, knowledge, and science; finding and supporting people who are creative; and bringing up young people to be intellectually free and active.
He continued:
We gave preference to further developing our old economy based on raw materials, and few and non-systematic measures were taken to promote our innovative technologies. We can't put this off any longer. We have to begin modernization of the whole industrial base. I think this is the matter of survival of our country in the modern world.
The policy shift underway in Russia was again stressed by Medvedev at a meeting with business leaders in Singapore on Nov. 14, on the eve of the annual APEC summit, bringing together 21 Asia-Pacific nations, including the United States. According to Itar-Tass, he again noted that the global financial crisis has forced a structural overhaul of the national economy, and that "Russia should become a country whose prosperity will depend not so much on raw materials as on intellectual resources, high technologies, innovative products, etc."
At that meeting, both he and Chinese President Hu Jintao stressed the importance of the recent agreements to build up the regions of the Russian Far East and China. "I have already given instructions on the fulfillment of the agreements," Medvedev told his Chinese counterpart." Hu noted that the Russian President is coming to China next year, and emphasized that this will be an "important event in the development of bilateral relations."
