Social and innovative turn of the Russian economy: plans and reality

Abstract

The black swan of the coronavirus pandemic confused all plans for 2020 and created a global recession unprecedented for the last century. Russia managed to limit the scale of the GDP’s and population mortality’s fall, but the losses provoked, in particular, by the seven years of stagnation, are great. Russia will be able to restore pre-crisis production levels in a year and a half, perhaps faster, but it will be extremely difficult to compensate for the population’s losses. There is a consensus that a transition to sustainable long-term growth with the growth rates exceeding the global ones will require powerful systemic changes and a high level of public trust. The most acute societal challenge is a low level of personal income, along with high inequality of income, wealth, and social opportunities. The formation of a new model of development, combining resource and hydrocarbon advantages with a new model of human capital, infrastructure and technologies, is decisive for long-term growth. We can do this only under condition of creation a new financial and managerial system in the country.