The Program of the Russia of the Future Party

Program of the political party "RUSSIA OF THE FUTURE"

Moscow, 2019

Introduction. The Beautiful Russia of the Future

We know for certain: Russia is a very rich country. It has abundant natural resources, and a high share of its people have higher education. It has industry, agriculture, and infrastructure. Yes, much of it is now in a deplorable state, but it exists. There is no need to build everything from scratch. Previous generations left us a country that, even now, can provide its citizens with a high standard of living. We simply need to ensure that Russia’s potential is used not to enrich the small group that has been in power for 18 years, but to work for everyone.

Russia’s wealth has meaning only when it increases the prosperity and quality of life of each and every one of us.

Right now, our country can afford to spend twice as much on healthcare and education. Right now, pensions can be no lower than the real subsistence minimum. Right now, we do not need to invent ways to find money for culture, the environment, or sports.

We have enough resources for all of this; we only need to set the right priorities. Right now, our future and our prospects are being devoured by corruption, as well as by insane, unnecessary spending on the bureaucratic apparatus, propaganda, wars, support for other countries, and so on. There has never been an example anywhere in the world of such spending leading a country to prosperity.

On the contrary, we know for certain that only investment in human capital makes a country successful. We are confident that we can direct resources and the energy of development toward people—and that this will lead to rapid positive change.

We must dream bigger. In the 21st century, surely we cannot be dreaming about how to ensure that a nurse earns more than the subsistence minimum. There is nothing to debate here; it simply has to be done. If you ask us what we would most like to see in the Beautiful Russia of the Future 20 years from now, we will say this: we want education to become the foundation of success there.

The situation now is monstrous: in most people’s minds, the word “educated” is associated more with “poor” than with “successful” or “accomplished.” In today’s Russia, wealth and prosperity are more likely to require connections or relatives, cynicism, the ability to flatter those in power, and a willingness to agree with everything said on television. Education ranks near the very bottom of the formula for success.

That is precisely why the country is not developing. Humanity has entered a new era in which knowledge and the ability to use it have become immeasurably more important than natural resources or geographic location. If we do not understand this and change the state’s strategy, we will fall behind the developed countries forever.

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In the Beautiful Russia of the Future, we want to see high technology that we export. The most advanced medicine. Well-paid jobs. An army with the best weapons. A culture that inspires the admiration of the entire world.

And for all of this, we need to invest in education, develop it, and make it the main condition for a citizen’s success. Every astonishing achievement, every breakthrough in every sphere of life, is made possible only by people with the best education. We will succeed when our schoolchildren know mathematics better than schoolchildren in Singapore, and English or biology better than the Swedes.

It is no coincidence that in developed countries, teaching is one of the highest-paid large-scale professions. Whatever you call them—educator, teacher, instructor—each of us spends 10 to 15 years of our lives with them. Their influence cannot be overstated.

The good news is that a state strategy to develop education and turn it into the main engine of social mobility will absolutely resonate with Russia’s citizens.

Every family without exception, regardless of political views, place of residence, or occupation, wants its children to receive the best possible education. So let us meet this admirable aspiration. Let us make it a priority of the state right now. We believe this is the right path to the Beautiful Russia of the Future.

Prosperity for all, not wealth for the 0.1%

Wealth inequality in Russia is among the highest in the world. At one end are people awash in money, keeping it in secret offshore accounts and buying up real estate around the world; at the other are outright poverty, predatory payday microloans, and an impoverished “middle class” with no real ability to secure decent housing or save for old age.

To address this situation, we plan to:

• Raise the minimum wage to 25,000 rubles (about US$270 at current exchange rates). Given the wide disparities in average incomes across Russia’s regions, the increase will be phased in gradually, at different speeds in different regions, but no longer than 5 years. • Cut red tape and break up monopolies in the construction market, reduce mortgage rates to 2%, and actively support the development of infrastructure for new residential districts. This will make housing affordable. • Increase and better target social benefits for people with disabilities and low-income people facing hardship, improving the effectiveness of this support.

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• Introduce a compensatory tax for the use of infrastructure created by the labor of previous generations and unfairly privatized in the 1990s and 2000s. Similar payments for the use of infrastructure from former regionally owned state enterprises should be transferred to the regions. • Create a special fund within the Pension Fund of Russia (PFR), to which all state assets, a share of natural resource export revenues, and proceeds from the compensatory tax will be redirected to cover pension system costs. At the same time, the insurance-based portion of contributions to the PFR will be reduced, while the funded portion will be made inviolable. Moreover, the money taken from citizens during the years when the funded component was frozen will be returned to them. The operation of the fund and of the entire pension system will be made fully transparent.

1. Raising Living Standards, Reducing Inequality, and Social Protection

The foundation of social inequality under the authoritarian-oligarchic model of capitalism that exists in Russia today is staggering wealth inequality. Wealth inequality in Russia is among the highest in the world. At one end are people awash in money, keeping it in secret offshore accounts and buying up real estate around the world; at the other are outright poverty, predatory payday microloans, and an impoverished “middle class” with no real ability to secure decent housing or save for old age.

All of the political and economic reforms set out in our program should contribute to reducing social and wealth inequality in Russia—above all, the fight against corruption, which is the main source of excessive inequality, as well as measures to protect and encourage entrepreneurship and tax reform.

In addition, we propose making the following priorities in this area: raising the minimum wage, developing the affordable housing market, and reforming the social support system and wage policy in the public sector.

• The minimum wage should be raised to 25,000 rubles (about US$270 at current exchange rates). Russia’s current minimum wage is lower than in many European and South American countries, including some with lower GDP per capita. Raising the minimum wage will increase incomes for the least well-off groups in the population. Given the wide disparities in average incomes across Russia’s regions, the increase in the minimum wage should be implemented nationwide over 5 years, and in most regions within 2–3 years. Decisions on the pace of the increase will be made by regional authorities.

• The construction sector remains one of the most corruption-ridden areas in Russia today. It is a source of fabulous enrichment for

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the state bureaucracy acting in concert with oligarchic business structures. This is reinforced by excessive regulation in the construction market, as well as monopolistic practices in sectoral building materials markets. As a result, the cost of housing and rent in Russia remains too high for ordinary citizens. At the same time, housing construction is a crucial source of economic dynamism and a path toward a real increase in citizens’ well-being. The key to solving the affordable housing problem lies in 1) decisive debureaucratization and demonopolization of the construction market, and 2) ensuring an acceptable mortgage interest rate. The state will be able to bring loan interest rates down to the level seen in developed countries. This will be achieved through partial interest-rate subsidies from the federal and regional authorities. The necessary funds will be raised, among other things, by making the real estate tax more progressive.

• To provide effective assistance to people in difficult circumstances, those in need, and those unable to care for themselves, social support must be better targeted. Today, a significant share of social program funding is spent on categorical payments and benefits, in other words spread too thinly and failing to reach those who truly need it. This situation suits the state bureaucracy, as it makes oversight of spending more difficult. Benefit levels must be increased by establishing clear eligibility criteria based on need and ensuring transparency and oversight in the use of funds.

• The gap in actual pay within the public sector will be sharply reduced. Today, the salaries of executives and senior managers in state-funded institutions often exceed the average pay of ordinary employees many times over.

2. Pension Reform

Pension reform is one of the strategic reforms that the new Russian government, relying on restored principles of democracy and popular sovereignty, will have to carry out. The new pension system must become a foundation for social peace and sustainable economic development.

The steadily rising share of pensioners in the country’s population makes it urgently necessary to build a pension system that is fair, ensures a dignified life for older generations, and at the same time does not place an unbearable burden on the working population or hinder economic growth.

This can be achieved through a combination of the following key measures:

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• Improved labor market regulation to help bring wages out of the shadow economy and reduce informal employment.

• A combination of pay-as-you-go and funded components in the pension system, with further development of the funded portion of pensions. Citizens’ accumulated pension savings, including those managed by state funds, will be the unconditional property of citizens and may not be seized under any pretext. The state will return to citizens the pension savings confiscated after 2014. Requirements for building funded pension savings will be gradually strengthened, leading to the emergence of “long-term capital” in the economy.

• The creation, within the Pension Fund, of a Future Generations Fund, whose assets will be formed through the mandatory transfer of a share of revenues from natural resource exports (primarily oil, gas, and metals), income from the management of all state property or from the privatization of state property and land, and compensation payments for the use of infrastructure created by the labor of previous generations. Income from managing all these assets will substantially increase the stability and financial security of the pension system.

• The creation of effective and fair economic incentives for later retirement, along with support for the development of flexible and remote forms of employment for older workers.

• Genuine transparency in the pension system: the Pension Fund budget will be approved annually by the State Duma alongside the federal budget; transparent formulas for calculating individual pensions will be introduced, and citizens will be given open access to their individual budget accounts.

3. Compensation Tax

In the view of most Russian citizens, the privatization of major state assets in the post-Soviet era was carried out in an extremely unfair manner and with numerous violations of the law. As a result, large-scale private property is not seen as legitimate in their eyes. Unjust privatization, on the one hand, contributed to the emergence of an oligarchic economy in Russia and, on the other, created conditions for the constant revision of property rights, undermined the rule of law in property relations, encouraged the fusion of oligarch owners with the state apparatus, and fueled social instability.

• To eliminate the consequences of these birth defects of Russian capitalism and Russian statehood, it is proposed to introduce a compensation tax for the use of infrastructure created by the labor of previous generations. To this end, it is proposed at the federal level to establish a list of major

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enterprises that have passed into private ownership over the past 30 years, and to introduce a special tax for their new owners for the use of infrastructure of former state enterprises, created by the labor of previous generations.

• The tax should not be excessively burdensome for companies; it should take into account the average rates of return in the relevant sectors of the economy, and its application will be limited in time (for example, to 10 years). The proceeds from the tax will be credited to the Future Generations Fund of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation. • The authority to regulate compensation payments for the use of infrastructure of former state enterprises at the regional level should be transferred to the regions. • The ultimate goal of this measure should be both to restore justice and to strengthen the institution of private property in Russia.

Fight Corruption, Not Put Up with Theft

Russia needs an “anti-corruption revolution.” Today, corruption has turned into a sprawling and sophisticated system through which narrow groups within the bureaucracy and oligarchy appropriate the fruits of economic activity. Corruption permeates the Russian state system from top to bottom, distorts the political system, places a heavy burden on business and the public, and hinders economic growth and diversification.

The fight against corruption is the main structural reform in both the political and economic spheres. Without success in this area, other reforms will not produce the necessary effect. In this regard, we propose the following priority steps:

• Establish a special independent anti-corruption body outside the law enforcement system. Its leadership will be appointed exclusively by agreement between the president and the State Duma. • Unconditionally ratify the UN Convention against Corruption, including the articles on combating the illicit enrichment of officials, and generally toughen penalties for corruption offenses. • Transfer state-owned companies, along with other state assets, under the control of a special fund attached to the Pension Fund of Russia. This will make it possible to place their management under strict public oversight. • The management of state-owned companies will, accordingly, be treated as public officials under income and expenditure disclosure rules. • Begin an active search abroad for Russian funds stolen through corruption offenses, with a view to returning them to the country. These funds will also go to the fund attached to the Pension Fund of Russia.

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• Reduce the state’s presence in the economy as an owner and economic actor.

1. Fighting Corruption

Russia needs an “anti-corruption revolution.” Today, corruption has become a sprawling and sophisticated system through which narrow groups within the bureaucracy and oligarchy appropriate the fruits of economic activity. Corruption permeates the Russian state system from top to bottom, distorts the political system, places a heavy burden on business by reducing incentives for entrepreneurship, and hinders economic growth and diversification. Today, all citizens of the Russian Federation pay a corruption tax—in the form of direct bribes to corrupt officials and law enforcement personnel, restricted access to markets and infrastructure, inflated prices, and the inefficient use of budget funds.

The fight against corruption is the central structural reform in both the political and economic spheres. Without success in this area, other reforms will not produce the desired results. The necessary conditions for an effective anti-corruption effort are freedom of the media, freedom for civic and political organizations to operate, political competition, fair elections and rotation of power, an independent judiciary, decentralization of power, the elimination of excessive regulation, and a reduced role for the state in the economy.

In addition, the following are proposed as priority anti-corruption measures:

• The establishment of a special anti-corruption body outside the law enforcement system—an independent Anti-Corruption Agency. The head of the Agency will be appointed by agreement between the president and the State Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament). The commission must also review existing legislation and departmental regulations for corruption risks; this procedure must become mandatory for all legislation that is adopted.

• Full and unconditional ratification of the UN Convention against Corruption, including the provisions on combating the illicit enrichment of officials; Russian legislation will be brought into line with the Convention. Public officials of any rank and from any branch of government whose spending (or the spending of their immediate relatives) exceeds documented income will automatically become subject to investigation. Penalties for concealing income and property will be tightened.

• Extending the statute of limitations from 10 to 20 years for corruption offenses and economically motivated crimes against the state and private individuals if the amount of damage exceeded $10 million.

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• Ensuring full transparency in the operations of state-owned companies, which have now become a focal point of systemic corruption. The management of state-owned companies will be treated like public officials under income and expenditure disclosure rules. To strengthen oversight of state-owned companies and ensure the fair use of revenues from state ownership of their shares or from their privatization, a package of draft laws will be developed providing for these assets to be transferred under the control of a special fund—the Future Generations Fund, overseen by the Pension Fund. • Intensifying international cooperation in the fight against corruption, including the search for Russian money stolen through corrupt crimes and moved abroad. • Introducing and tightening laws on conflict-of-interest disclosure, lobbying, and information disclosure standards (including disclosure of ultimate beneficial owners) for companies supplying goods and services to the state and to state-owned companies.

2. State Assets in the Service of Society

A crucial element in dismantling the authoritarian-oligarchic model and combating systemic corruption must be reducing the state’s presence in the economy as an owner and economic actor, increasing the efficiency and transparency of managing the property that remains in state ownership, ensuring the fair distribution of the income it generates, and managing that income effectively.

• This legal form of entity, the “state corporation,” will be abolished. The assets of state corporations will be returned to the state, while the corporations themselves will be converted into joint-stock companies and managed under standard corporate procedures, taking into account the legislation governing state-owned companies. • State-owned companies and state banks must sell off their non-core assets. The state’s share in state banks must be steadily reduced. The share of state and municipal ownership in enterprises, real estate, and land will be gradually lowered. For every asset that remains in state ownership, a public justification will be prepared. • Special transparency standards will be developed for the management of state property. Open competitive selection procedures will be introduced for appointing the heads of companies and banks under state control, as well as for selecting independent members of boards of directors. • State shareholdings in major companies will be transferred to the Future Generations Fund, a subsidiary of the Pension Fund, and the income from

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managing these shareholdings or from their privatization will be added to the Fund’s assets, whose purpose is to increase the sustainability and fairness of the pension system. This will place the management of these holdings and the use of the related revenues under strict public oversight.

Hospitals and roads, not officials’ palaces

1. Spending Efficiency and a Development Budget

A crucial element of genuine popular rule is returning to society the means to control how budget funds are spent—funds generated by the tax contributions of citizens and businesses. Today, these resources are shamelessly appropriated by the bureaucracy and the business structures tied to it. This not only violates the principles of social justice and fair competition, but also deprives the country of the resources it needs for development—investment in infrastructure and social capital.

The state budget has turned into the personal fiefdom of presidential power, used for political purposes and to secure the loyalty of the bureaucracy. Artificially inflated spending on security and defense results in chronic underfunding of healthcare. As a result, actual budget expenditures do not cover the state’s obligations under mandatory health insurance. This, in turn, creates a revolting injustice that citizens constantly encounter in clinics and hospitals.

In the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)—an association of the world’s 35 most developed economies—an average of 9% of GDP is spent on healthcare and 5.2% on education. For Russia to move closer to these levels, it needs to at least double healthcare funding, from 3.5% to 7% of GDP, and increase education funding by 1.5 times, from 3.7% to 5.5%, while also creating incentives for private investment in these sectors.

To turn the budget from a tool of corruption and bad-faith enrichment for the few into an instrument for developing the national economy, it is necessary to:

• Increase budget transparency by reducing the number of line items shielded from public oversight.

• Radically reform the principles and mechanisms of budget spending under the “national economy” heading, ending subsidies for low-efficiency state-owned and quasi-state enterprises, as well as politically motivated and economically unjustified “priority projects”; budget subsidies must become a tool for restructuring the economy and stimulating growth, not for enriching officials.

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• It is necessary to build an independent, open, and effective system of budget auditing at the federal, regional, and municipal levels, and to ensure full online transparency of budget spending so that any citizen can find out in just a few clicks how much budget money was spent to build the playground in their courtyard. An automated system for monitoring public procurement contracts must also be created.

• Budget spending under the headings “national security and law enforcement” must be reduced, with these funds reallocated in favor of “healthcare” and “education.” Investment in human capital is a key condition for the competitiveness of the national economy in the post-industrial era.

2. Reducing the regulatory burden, demonopolizing the economy, and promoting competition

Reducing bureaucratic pressure on the economy, demonopolization, and the protection and development of competition are among the most important tasks of a democratic government focused on creating the conditions for fair (inclusive) growth, reviving and encouraging entrepreneurial initiative, and transitioning from oligarchic to social capitalism. This requires, first and foremost, a set of specific measures in the following areas:

• A strict and decisive limitation on the use of the law enforcement system and law enforcement agencies for the purpose of redistributing assets, pressuring competitors, or providing criminal “protection” to businesses. This will be achieved through both the reforms listed in other sections and special measures: modernizing criminal legislation (especially with regard to economic crimes), clarifying the jurisdiction of various law enforcement bodies, increasing judicial independence, limiting the grounds for pretrial detention, tightening liability for knowingly biased actions that cause substantial material damage, and restricting investigative actions that disrupt company operations (seizure of documents, hard drives, etc.).

• A genuine reduction in business regulation, limits on the powers of oversight bodies, a shift to insurance-based and economic mechanisms of liability for possible harm resulting from commercial activity, and recognition of EU and U.S. certificates in Russia (eliminating mandatory certification under Russian standards). One mechanism in this area is alignment with, and a gradual transition to, European regulatory norms and certification standards.

• To protect and develop competition, it is proposed to create a special body under the government (or a joint body of the government and the State

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Duma (the lower house of Russia’s parliament) — the National Commission for the Protection of Competition), which would be responsible for drafting competition protection legislation, regulations, and measures to remove barriers to competition in sectoral and local markets. If this commission raises the question of whether a particular regulation is necessary, the relevant agency must justify its necessity within 45 days. If no such justification is published, that regulation is repealed.

• One of the tasks of such a commission would be the demonopolization of the economy: developing standards for opening access to the infrastructure of monopoly companies, separating out potentially competitive businesses from monopoly companies, and so on.

3. Tax system reform

Changes to the tax system should be aimed at promoting fair (inclusive) growth, that is, serving at the same time the goals of economic development and the fair distribution of income generated by economic growth. Defining the parameters of a tax reform consistent with these two goals will be one of the most important tasks of the new, democratically elected parliament. The following steps are proposed as the main directions of such reform:

• Tax and administrative measures will be taken to reduce offshorization and the shadow sector of the Russian economy. Both are largely the result of regulatory flaws in an authoritarian-oligarchic system. It is necessary to restore citizens’ trust in the state while at the same time erecting barriers against bad-faith behavior in the tax sphere.

• It is necessary to restore fairness to the tax system by equalizing the level of the tax burden across different sectors, in particular by increasing the artificially lowered tax burden in the gas industry, which today leads to uncontrolled spending and misappropriation of funds that in essence belong to the state and the country’s citizens.

• The main priorities of tax reform will be: a substantial reduction in taxes on labor, reducing the regressive nature of the tax system—where lower-income people pay a larger share of their income into the budget than higher-income people—and increasing and strengthening the progressive taxation of real estate and other expensive consumer goods.

• Companies will be given broader opportunities to count justified expenses as costs, and tax reporting will be simplified.

• The tax system should encourage the development of small businesses. Above all, tax administration must be made significantly easier. For small enterprises, all reporting requirements will be abolished; they will simply pay a small fixed patent fee. Freezing company bank accounts over minor debts (up to 1,000 rubles) must be prohibited. An annual tax amnesty should be carried out automatically:

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an annual tax amnesty: writing off all unpaid taxes, late-payment interest, and fines totaling up to 100 rubles for both individuals and businesses. Collecting such amounts costs more than the arrears themselves.

• For small enterprises, all on-site tax inspections should be abolished, while desk audits should be limited to cross-checking declarations against those of counterparties. For such companies in their first year of operation, only the recovery of tax arrears and interest may be предусмотрено, without fines.

• The most important direction of tax and budget reform is the redistribution of powers and tax revenues among the three levels of the budgetary and tax system—federal, regional, and municipal—as described in the section on federalism.

Trust people instead of deciding everything in Moscow

Though formally called a federation, Russia has by now become a unitary state. It is necessary to begin moving in the opposite direction—toward restoring the balance of powers between the federal and regional authorities and significantly expanding the role of local self-government as the foundation of the entire system of popular rule. To achieve this, it is necessary to:

• Eliminate the participation of higher-level authorities in the formation of lower-level ones, while granting full independence to regions and municipalities. To this end, the status of elected officials in the regions and municipalities should be raised, and they should be granted immunity pending a court decision.

• Redistribute tax revenues and budget powers from the center to the regions and, above all, to municipalities. The municipality will become the key link in the system of government.

• Give municipalities and federal subjects the ability to compete for investment and human resources. To this end, they will be granted broader powers to adopt local laws and the right to pursue flexible tax policies.

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The Return of Federalism

One of the foundations of Russian statehood, alongside the principles of popular rule, the rule of law, and the separation of powers, is its federal character. The division of powers and areas of responsibility between the center and the regions is the most important counterweight to an excessive concentration of power in the hands of the president.

Though formally called a federation, Russia has by now become a unitary state. It is necessary to begin moving in the opposite direction—toward restoring the balance of powers between the federal and regional authorities and significantly expanding the role of local self-government as the foundation of the entire system of popular rule.

The distribution of rights, powers, and resources among the three levels of government will help create a system of checks and balances that preserves a competitive environment and enables the balanced development of the Federation and its territories.

• It is necessary to restore a system under which the formation of regional government bodies is the exclusive responsibility of the regions themselves, with the federal authorities playing no role in the process. Likewise, regional authorities must be excluded from any role in forming local self-government bodies. • All elected public officials (members of the State Duma, regional legislatures, and municipalities, as well as elected governors and mayors) must enjoy immunity unless and until they are stripped of their status by a court ruling. • The status and powers of mayors—the heads of major municipalities—must be закреплены in a special law. The whole of modern civilization’s life takes place in cities, and government reform should promote the transfer of the maximum possible powers to the city level. Mayors and city dumas (municipal councils) elected by direct vote must become the key link in the system of government. • Tax revenues and budgetary powers must be redistributed from the center to the regions and, above all, to municipalities. Today, the ratio of federal to regional budget spending is approximately 60:40; in four years it should be 50:50, and in eight years, 45:55. To ensure balanced regional and local budgets and to abandon the harmful practice of transfers, the following is proposed: 1) increase the share of tax revenues left at the disposal of the regions (in particular, at least half of corporate profit tax revenues); 2) establish a procedure under which a certain share of revenues from federal taxes and duties (VAT, mineral extraction tax, export-import payments) is automatically transferred to the National Fund for Territorial Development and

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distributed among municipalities in proportion to population; 3) define the spending obligations to be transferred from the federal authorities to regional and municipal governments. Only such a redistribution of revenues and responsibilities can ensure genuine federalization. • Municipalities and federal subjects (regions) must be able to compete for investment and human resources. This requires flexibility in tax policy—that is, broader powers to adopt local laws.

Economic Development, Not Political Isolation

• In today’s world, it is more profitable to be friends and trade than to wage war. Russia should use its unique position between Europe and Asia to become a respected partner for all. In the modern world, the countries that are respected are those whose citizens live in freedom and prosperity. • The hundreds of billions that Russia is now throwing away on wars in Syria and Ukraine, and on supporting authoritarian regimes, would be better spent on improving life at home. • It is in our country’s interest to pursue political and economic rapprochement with prosperous European countries. • Russia needs a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus. Labor migrants should come on work visas, not in an uncontrolled manner. • Russia should be a leading country in Europe and Asia, expanding its influence through economic strength and cultural outreach, including support for the Russian language around the world.

Alexei Navalny has for many years advocated a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia and equal cooperation with the European Union. Labor migrants should come only on work visas, to a specific employer and a specific job, where they are genuinely needed. For the whole world, Russia must become an economically attractive country that everyone wants to work with and respects, because its citizens live with dignity and prosperity.

Modern Russia in the Modern World

• The foundation of Russia’s greatness is not the size of its territory, its natural wealth, or its military power, but above all its human resources—its people. Ensuring these people a dignified life and opportunities to prosper is the main task of both domestic and foreign policy. Russia must restore its image as a peace-loving country and put that peacefulness in the service of economic

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development. External aggression, confrontation, territorial disputes, and hybrid wars are merely a way for a handful of arrogant corrupt officials to cling to power. • The country’s foreign policy strategy must serve, above all, the well-being and rising prosperity of its citizens and strengthen the competitiveness of the economy. Great-power status will be lost irreversibly if Russia does not prove its economic viability based not on the sale of oil and gas, but on competitiveness, broad participation in global value chains, and the development of post-industrial sectors. • Russia’s top priority on the international stage is to reduce tensions in relations with the EU, the United States, and Ukraine. To achieve this, immediate consultations must begin on the full range of mutual grievances and problems in relations with these countries—Russia’s most important partners on the international stage. • Russia will return to a policy of unconditional commitment to fulfilling its obligations under previously concluded treaties. The unilateral violation of such obligations has inflicted enormous damage on Russia’s international standing and long-term interests. • The status of Crimea is a problem that the new democratic Russia will inherit from the previous government. Russia’s position on this issue will be determined by recognition of the right of the peoples of Crimea to decide their own fate. • Russia must abandon support for various dictatorial and failed regimes around the world, stop providing them with aid and loans only to later write those loans off, and stop supporting separatist movements, insurgent groups, and opposition parties around the world for the sake of the political ambitions of specific individuals. The main ambition of Russia’s leadership should be to turn the country into a modern, prosperous power. • Russia’s unique geographic position makes it both necessary and possible to develop economic integration in three directions: economic integration in the post-Soviet space (development of EurAsEC, the Eurasian Economic Community); expanded mutually beneficial integration with the EU; and the promotion of integration processes in the Far East (Japan, South Korea, China). These three directions must be harmonized rather than set against one another. • Russia must return to the ideology of strategic partnership and integration with EU countries on the basis of the concept of the “four common spaces,” with the ultimate goal of creating a free trade area between the EU and EurAsEC. As part of this strategy, negotiations on introducing a visa-free regime between Russia and the EU should be intensified. • Russia will revise the format of its participation in the international anti-terrorist coalition: political support for the regime of Bashar

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al-Assad and other similar regimes is not a priority of Russian foreign policy, does not serve Russia’s long-term interests, and reduces the effectiveness of the fight against terrorism. • Russia will introduce a visa regime with the countries of Central Asia and the South Caucasus, while radically simplifying the legal procedures required for residents of developed countries to obtain the right to work in Russia.

Justice for All, Not the Arbitrary Rule of the Security Services

Over the past 17 years, Russia’s law enforcement system has been transformed from an institution for protecting citizens’ rights and freedoms into an institution for keeping power in the hands of a single circle of people. As a result, the country’s citizens have been deprived not only of honest investigations and fair trials, but also of the ability to feel safe, despite the substantial budget spending on these state bodies.

To remedy the situation, it is necessary to: • Restore the independence of the judiciary. Among the first and most obvious steps are reducing the influence of the executive branch, headed by the president, dismantling the “judicial vertical” (a top-down hierarchical system of court control), and returning genuine independence to judges. Of course, this must also include lustration of judges found to have participated in unlawful, politically motivated, and orchestrated trials. • Make law enforcement agencies serve citizens by protecting their rights and freedoms and ensuring public safety. This requires decentralizing the system’s management in favor of regional and municipal authorities, reducing the administrative apparatus, cutting bureaucracy in detectives’ and operatives’ work, and abolishing the “quota system” (“palochnaya sistema,” a performance system based on numerical targets). At the same time, the police should be relieved of extraneous functions, the National Guard (Rosgvardiya) should be significantly reduced, the prosecutor’s office should be stripped of its general supervisory role, which is also performed by specialized government bodies, the FSB should be deprived of its political policing functions, and the army should be made fully professional. • Humanize the Criminal Code. Reduce penalties for a wide range of offenses, especially in the economic sphere; make imprisonment, including during pretrial proceedings, a measure of last resort, used mainly for violent and socially dangerous crimes. After that, grant amnesty to those convicted under criminal provisions recognized as unjustifiably harsh. • Radically reform the penitentiary system (FSIN, the Federal Penitentiary Service): instead of being merely a “punishment enforcement service” that only breeds more crime, it should be turned into an institution for rehabilitating citizens who have gone astray. In addition to personnel and structural reform, this can be achieved through greater public transparency and by separating first-time offenders and those convicted of minor offenses from repeat offenders and those who have committed serious and especially serious crimes.

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1. Judicial Power

Today, Russian citizens are deprived of the right to a fair and impartial trial. The judicial system is subject to intense administrative pressure and riddled with corruption; it has been shaped into a bureaucratic vertical incompatible with genuine justice and serving the interests of the security agencies and those who hold political power.

Russia needs genuine judicial reform, one that will make the court system independent of the executive branch and ensure that Russian citizens are equal before the law. Such a system will not emerge overnight; it will require serious, sustained work and detailed planning with the participation of the legal and judicial community and civil society organizations. But the first steps to strengthen judicial authority and cleanse the court system must be taken now. To do this, it is necessary to:

• Make the judicial appointment system more transparent and effective by tightening formal requirements for candidates, excluding court chairpersons from influencing selection procedures, and strengthening the role of judicial self-governing bodies. A four-year cooling-off period should be imposed on judicial candidates coming from law enforcement agencies and court administrative staff.

• Experience as a practicing lawyer and/or work experience outside the state sector should become one of the key criteria for appointment to the bench.

• Introduce the election of justices of the peace by the public.

• Ensure the financial independence of the judiciary by transferring authority over budget funds to the Judicial Department, a single support body serving all branches of the judicial system.

• Dismantle the “judicial vertical” (a top-down hierarchical system of court control), which is incompatible with justice, by radically reforming the institution of court chairpersons. Court chairpersons should rotate every two years or be elected for the same term without the right to reelection. The assignment of cases among judges should follow clear rules or be carried out by lottery. Administrative and хозяйственные functions should be transferred to judicial departments; the technical organization of court operations should be entrusted to a court administrator who is not a judge. The work of the Judicial Qualifications Board will become public and transparent, and court chairpersons will not participate in its work while serving in office.

• As part of judicial reform, it is necessary to carry out a complete renewal of the Supreme Court’s membership, as well as lustration of judges found to have participated in unjust, politically motivated, and orchestrated trials (to review

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applications from victims of such trials, a special judicial chamber should be established).

• An important step toward restoring trust in the courts will be the decentralization of the judicial system through further specialization. In particular, the merger of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Commercial Court will be reversed. It is also proposed to introduce the institution of judicial investigators, which will make it possible to conduct independent expert examinations and review case materials during court proceedings. Judicial districts should be established for appellate and cassation courts, with boundaries that do not coincide with those of the federal subjects (regions) of the Russian Federation.

• A judge who decided on a pretrial preventive measure and reviewed complaints regarding the conduct of the investigation under supervisory procedure must be barred from hearing the same case on its merits.

• The work of the judicial system will be opened to oversight by the judicial community and the public. To this end, it is proposed to require audio and video recording of all court hearings, granting such recordings the status of official documents.

• Alongside tougher anti-corruption measures, the criminal law system must be made more humane: provisions related to economic crimes should be modernized, and sentencing ranges should be narrowed. The basic principle of administering justice will be a restorative approach to damaged social relations, providing for compensation for harm done in place of punitive measures.

2. Law Enforcement and Security Agencies

Law enforcement agencies are the backbone of the entire state system. Their task is to ensure citizens’ safety and the strict observance of the law by all. The authoritarian-corrupt regime established in Russia uses the law enforcement system as its “watchdog,” as a means of redistributing economic benefits and property, persecuting inconvenient people, and restricting popular rule.

It is necessary to restore to law enforcement agencies an awareness of their public mission, their self-respect, and the trust of the population, and to free them from the dictates of oligarchy, corruption, and political functions.

Today, the law enforcement system is, on the one hand, trapped in hyper-centralization and, as a result, burdened by excessive bureaucratic control from above; on the other hand, it is in no way accountable to assessments of its performance from below—from Russia’s citizens. This vicious situation is leading to the degradation of the law enforcement system.

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To remedy the situation, the following priority measures are proposed:

• A permanent committee of the State Duma and the Federation Council will be established to oversee the activities of law enforcement agencies. Former law enforcement officers may not serve as members of the committee. The committee’s functions will include organizing a system of public oversight of police activity. This system will be independent of executive branch structures and will rely in its work on independent monitoring, public opinion surveys, and citizens’ complaints and appeals.

• Reform of the law enforcement agencies must serve the interests of federalization and the decentralization of oversight over their activities. The head of the Investigative Committee appoints the heads of the Investigative Committee’s regional directorates, while the Prosecutor General appoints district prosecutors for federal districts that unite several federal subjects (regions). The head of a regional directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is to be confirmed by the regional legislative body upon nomination by the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the head of the municipal militia (police) by the municipality upon nomination by the head of the regional directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

• The heads of regional and municipal police will report on their work to the relevant government authority, which may issue a vote of no confidence in them. A public opinion poll (plebiscite) on confidence in municipal and regional police will be introduced, to be held at the request of municipal or regional assembly deputies, as well as at the request of citizens.

• A structural reform of the police will be carried out, aimed at reducing the management apparatus, moving technical services out of the regular staff structure, reducing the overall number of police personnel, and relieving the police of excessive functions and powers; the functions of the traffic police (GIBDD, the State Road Safety Inspectorate) will be transferred to regional and municipal police departments; the bureaucratic burden on operational officers will be removed, the quota-driven performance system will be abolished, and the volume of statistical reporting will be reduced many times over.

• OMON units (special riot police) will be returned to the authority of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the size of the National Guard will be sharply reduced.

• The most important function of external oversight of the police will be the eradication of the vicious and unlawful practice of torture. Penalties for such crimes will be made harsher.

• A key factor in improving the work of law enforcement agencies is a review of legislation to identify criminal offense definitions that are inherently vague and open to differing interpretations.

• It is necessary to clarify the powers and functions of the prosecutor’s office. Its main functions should be: oversight of investigations and preliminary inquiries, prosecution in court, and supervision over compliance with federal laws and with human rights and freedoms by the authorities of the federal subjects and municipal bodies

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authorities. General supervisory functions that duplicate the powers of specialized government bodies must be eliminated.

• The FSB (Federal Security Service) must be stripped of its political surveillance functions, and the legislation regulating its activities will be substantially clarified; the status of active reserve officers will be abolished.

• We support a full transition to a voluntary contract-based army. The main factor in Russia’s security is a professional military. A conscript army is ineffective and too costly for society. For those who wish to serve in the military, a form of initial contract will be introduced, providing opportunities for further education and professional growth.

3. Humanizing the Justice System

Russia needs a more humane criminal law framework and a reform of the penitentiary system that dismantles the system of extrajudicial repression and the “factory of criminals.” To achieve this, in particular, it is necessary to:

• Conduct a review of the Criminal Code aimed at clarifying the definitions of offenses, reducing penalties for a wide range of offenses, especially in the economic sphere, narrowing the sentencing range in order to reduce arbitrariness in sentencing, replacing imprisonment with alternative forms of punishment for a number of offenses, and tightening the grounds for pretrial detention.

• Introduce separate detention for those convicted of non-serious offenses and first-time offenders, apart from those who have committed especially serious crimes and are serving sentences for the second time or more.

• Eradicate the practice of torture in the penal system, tighten legislation in this area, introduce the institution of prisoners’ rights commissioners, and develop the system of Public Monitoring Commissions (ONK), including by clarifying their rights, operating procedures, and principles of formation.

• Carry out a broad amnesty for those convicted of economic crimes.

• Before trial, only persons who pose a danger to society should be held in custody. The detention of persons suspected of economic crimes should be permitted only in exceptional cases.

• To increase the effectiveness of the fight against drug trafficking, the approach to it must be fundamentally reconsidered. Today, law enforcement agencies report success by imprisoning drug users, while drug trafficking distribution networks (including those supported by state officials and law enforcement personnel) remain untouchable. This situation must be reversed by humanizing the system

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liability for the purchase and possession of “soft” drugs, while focusing efforts on combating the distribution and production of hard drugs that pose a deadly threat to citizens and society.

Popular rule, not authoritarianism

At present, there is a huge imbalance in the distribution of power: the legislative and judicial branches have become appendages of the presidential power vertical and meekly carry out its will.

Among the main political reform measures we propose are:

• Move from a super-presidential system to a presidential-parliamentary republic. This will require limiting some of the president’s powers, returning to a 4-year term in office, and limiting the number of terms to two, whether consecutive or not. At the same time, parliament’s powers must be expanded, after re-electing it in fair elections and restoring a 4-year term of office. The Federation Council must become a genuinely functioning body, with members elected by the regions through direct elections.

• Reform electoral and party legislation to ensure freer and more equal access for citizens to politics at every level. To protect the newly established democratic electoral system, penalties for interference in elections must be strengthened and the real independence of election commissions must be guaranteed.

• Remove religion from any involvement in state affairs and abandon ideological control over citizens’ public and private lives, including in culture and the arts.

• Restore freedom of information and the media. To do this, it will be necessary to repeal laws that in any way restrict freedom of speech; make the internet self-regulating; reduce and cap the state’s share in the media; and prevent the concentration of multiple media outlets and stakes of more than 25% in federal television channels in the same hands. In addition, a system of state grant support for independent media should be introduced to prevent market monopolization. Decisions on awarding such grants should be made not by officials, but by independent public commissions.

• Carry out lustration. Its objectivity and effectiveness will be guaranteed by a specially created commission made up of representatives of different branches of government. In addition, it will identify and repeal harmful laws adopted over the past 17 years and investigate cases of political repression.

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1. Political reform

This is a key element of the program. It is necessary to eliminate the situation in which the right to make any decisions has been usurped by a narrow circle of people close to the president.

At present, there is a huge imbalance in the distribution of power: the legislative and judicial branches have become appendages of the presidential power vertical and meekly carry out its will. This became possible, in particular, because the executive branch brought the electoral process under its control: it restricts access for undesirable parties and candidates, obstructs campaigning and the opposition’s access to the mass media, and falsifies voting results.

The main political reform measures we propose to remedy this situation are as follows:

• Move from a super-presidential system to a presidential-parliamentary republic. This will require limiting some of the president’s powers, in particular the right to dissolve the Duma, returning to a 4-year term in office, and limiting the number of terms to two, whether consecutive or not.

• Expand parliament’s powers, after first re-electing it in fair elections and restoring a 4-year term of office.

• Remove unconstitutional artificial restrictions on the registration of political parties and the holding of rallies, and expand access to elections for parties and citizens by abolishing various “filters.” Lower the threshold for entering the Duma to 3%.

• Expand the powers of the Duma and regional assemblies to hold referendums and public consultations on matters within their competence (“direct democracy”).

• Make the Federation Council a genuinely functioning body, with members elected by the regions through direct elections.

• Expand the powers of parliament and the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia’s parliament) to oversee the executive branch, including the authority to order investigations into senior officials. These investigations will be conducted by an independent prosecutor appointed by the Federal Assembly (Russia’s national legislature).

2. Freedom of Information and the Media

Citizens’ access to truthful and objective information, and to a diversity of competing viewpoints, is a vital element of popular sovereignty. The fight against corruption and the pursuit of social justice are impossible under conditions of unfree media. The state’s efforts must be focused on creating conditions that prevent censorship and the monopolization of access to information.

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• Legal provisions that implicitly restrict freedom of speech will be repealed or revised, including the defamation law and anti-extremism legislation.

• New legislation on freedom and self-regulation on the internet will be adopted; the law allowing websites to be blocked without a court order will be repealed, and the internet sector will operate on the basis of self-regulation; protection of children from harmful content will be implemented as a free optional service provided by internet providers.

• Regulation of access to radio and television frequencies will be reformed, and barriers to the operation of private cable networks will be removed.

• The state will sharply limit its involvement in the mass media, above all in television. Indirect state involvement in media operations, including through state-owned companies or companies established with state participation, will be eliminated.

• The heads of state television and radio companies will be selected through an open competition by supervisory boards formed on an equal basis by the executive branch, the Federal Assembly (Russia’s national legislature), and representatives of the public.

• Antitrust rules in the media asset market will be tightened to prevent excessive market concentration in the hands of a narrow circle of private shareholders. In particular, the ownership stake of any one shareholder in the privatization of existing federal television channels will be capped at 25%;

• Private owners of media assets must earn money through commercial activity, not through the manipulation of information. To this end, legislation protecting editorial independence and preventing attempts at censorship and information manipulation, regardless of ownership structure, will be strengthened.

• The federal government must create a grant distribution system, independent of itself, to support regional media and prevent monopolization in local markets.

3. Lustration

Lustration—that is, barring from public office, employment in state institutions, and professional activity in certain fields those involved in violating human rights and freedoms, using state authority for personal gain, perverting justice, obstructing citizens’ free expression of will and political activity, knowingly spreading lies and disinformation in the media, and facilitating corruption—is a crucial step toward building a state governed by the rule of law.

In our country’s history, there have been many episodes when people holding public office and serving in state bodies acted not in the interests of the state, society, and the law, but in the interests of specific individuals and groups. Yet

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their actions were never subsequently given any legal assessment, and they themselves bore no responsibility.

Lustration is intended to establish in the public mind the principle that employees of law enforcement and state bodies, the justice system, and the mass media serve the interests of society, the state, and the law—not those of a particular “boss.” To achieve this, it is necessary to identify the circle of persons whose actions caused substantial harm to the public interest, were in clear contradiction with constitutional principles and the principles of law, violated human rights and freedoms, or grossly violated professional ethics. Lustration is a mild form of public sanction; it does not mean exemption from criminal liability for those whose actions directly violated the Criminal Code.

• To carry out lustration, it is proposed to adopt a lustration law and establish a lustration commission made up of representatives of the executive and legislative branches, as well as public organizations. • The commission’s remit should also include work on “cleaning up the legislation” — repealing odious laws that are openly repressive in nature, contradict the spirit and letter of the Constitution, and cause significant harm to civil society (the “Dima Yakovlev Law” (Russia’s ban on U.S. adoptions of Russian children), the right to be forgotten law, the “foreign agents” law, the internet surveillance law, and others). • A special area of the commission’s work should be the investigation of the practice of political repression revived in recent years, analysis of cases of political repression and of the legal provisions that contributed to its revival, and identification of both the victims of repression and the individuals involved in organizing it.

The Party’s Goals and Objectives

The main goal of the political party “RUSSIA OF THE FUTURE” is to achieve reforms that will make our country wealthy, successful, and prosperous, and ensure a decent standard of living for all Russian citizens. All of our tasks and methods (campaigning, attracting new supporters, nominating our own candidates for public office, drafting reform proposals, etc.) are subordinate to this goal. And as we move toward it, we will act in accordance with the principles of voluntariness, openness, legality, and equality.