Russia’s future under the microscope at Yeltsin Forum

Experts analyze the reforms and the mechanisms of the Yeltsin’s times to help creating a system of transformation for the future.

(Russia Beyond the Headlines – rbth.ru – NADEZHDA USTÍNOVA, SPECIAL TO RBTH – December 17, 2015)

Nearly a quarter of a century after the collapse of the Soviet Union and founding of today’s Russia, experts have met to discuss constitutional principles and their prospects for development in the country.

The forum, at Moscow’s the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center, held December 16, was dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in Dec. 1993.

“Time has shown that those ideas and principals, formulated under Yeltsin, have suffered significant erosion,” political scientist Andrey Medushevsky told the conference. He believes that Russia again faces a choice: what path it should follow, how it should implement reforms, what the country should refuse.

By examining such issues, he said, the forum could analyze the reforms and the mechanisms of the Yeltsin’s times to help “create a system of transformation for the future.”

Yeltsin’s closest adviser Gennady Burbulis, forum moderator, told RBTH: “The Yeltsin Center’s activity today is based on understanding the epoch of the first Russian president and how that influences the country today.”

The Yeltsin Center was created in 2008. The core of the center is the Boris Yeltsin Museum in Yekaterinburg. Its archives include tens of thousands of documents, photos, more than 130 video interviews and 163 media programs.

Article also appeared at rbth.com/politics_and_society/2015/12/17/russias-future-under-the-microscope-at-yeltsin-forum_552043