Boris Akunin: "In the 21st century the hard power ceases to be effective"

“We live in the 21st century, when hard power is no longer effective. It prevents the system from developing.

This current tough Russia, vertical, which has turned into a police state, is not competitive. Neither in the economic sense nor in the technological sense. Not from the point of view, I apologize for this term, human capital.

People have no opportunity to develop, there is a brain drain. And this is a dead-end path.

In order for Russia to start developing, it needs to be rebuilt from the foundation.

Not how it was done, I don't know, under Alexander II, not how the provisional government did it, which, however, did not have time for this. Not like it did in the 1990s.

Russia should be together, because all parts of this country want to be together.

This means that we need to abandon Moscow centrism, it should be a real federation. People who live in Vladivostok, or in the Urals, or in Yakutia - they themselves must determine how they live.

They must solve their problems themselves. This is the first thing.

Let them live in their own way... It should be the United States of Russia, where 90% of decisions are made locally.

The second question is, why should these states live together? There should be some meaning here.

This means that the Russian Federation should be a kind of national project that is interesting to all participants, which keeps them all together.

There must be such general federal programs that will not be within the power of each of these separate parts.

And this is exactly what we need to talk about today, this needs to be discussed today, and this is what we need to prepare for.

Because if tomorrow, or in a year, or in ten years this police state collapses - and it collapses eventually - but this conceptual problem is not solved, new democratic leaders will come to power who will face the same problem. and face the same choice.

And they will either have to leave, because they are not strong enough, or they will have to abandon democracy and again restore this same Horde system and vertical”.