MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Yury Filippov.) President Vladimir Putin has chaired the first session of the Council for National Projects in the Kremlin.
This is a momentous event: Russian leaders have not addressed any large-scale, long-term and ambitious projects in the last several years. Most endeavors of the government were designed at resolving numerous difficulties that arose in the 1990s. It worked to achieve macroeconomic stabilization, to curb runaway inflation, to repay mammoth external debts (that exceeded budgetary revenues many times over), to resolve the involved Chechen crisis, to strengthen the state machinery and to accomplish numerous other objectives.
All these extremely important trouble-shooting measures could not be called truly national projects that would consolidate, mobilize and eventually change the society. In fact, they were mostly called on to overcome the protracted crisis.
And now there are plans to overhaul Russia's health care and education systems, to build inexpensive housing and to create a cost-effective agro-industrial sector. Russia has the required resources for implementing these four high-priority national projects. President Putin has said that the 2006 federal budget will set aside 180 billion rubles ($6.26 billion, or _5.31 billion) for this purpose. These projects may receive additional appropriations later on. The budget will spend one-third more money on education and agriculture, with health care appropriations soaring by 60%. And 300% more will be spent on housing construction.
Apart from funds, Russia and its leaders have the will to put these projects into practice. In the first half of the twentieth century a number of monumental national projects were implemented: electrification, industrialization and space exploration. As a result, Russia became one of world leaders, and its society was modernized. They often required tremendous efforts on the part of the people but produced a significant economic effect.
It appears that today Russia once again has sufficient resources and willpower to implement national projects in the social sphere today.
