Alexey Navalny’s campaign platform

Russia has grown tired of the ongoing rivalry between the three unproductive camps of economic thought: Alexey Kudrin and the «systemic liberals», who want to increase the retirement age and reduce the social payments, Sergey Glazyev and the «conductists», who want to launch a currency issue fraught with a sharp increase of the prices, overregulate the economy and shut down the borders, and, of course, Putin's government, which simply doesn't want to do anything to improve the economic situation and instead continues enriching the officialdom and the monopolies.

The rate of wealth distribution inequality in Russia is one of the highest in the world. On one end, we have people rolling in money, keeping it on their offshore accounts, buying real estate across the world. On the other end are flat-out poverty, microloans until pay day, the indigent «middle class» that is unable to purchase decent accommodation or save up enough for retirement.

To solve this situation, we plan to:

• Increase the minimal monthly wage to 25 thousand rubles. Considering the high differentiation of average income rates across Russian regions, the increase will happen gradually, at a different pace in different regions, but won't take more than 5 years.

• Demonopolize and cut the red tape for the construction market, decrease the mortgage rates to 2% actively assist the preparation of infrastructure for new residential districts. This will make this housing affordable.

• Increase the social security benefits to disabled and indigent and make them addressed. This will increase the efficiency of these benefits.

• Introduce a compensating tax on the usage of the infrastructure created by the past generations and unfairly privatized in the 80s and 2000s. Transfer similar payments for the usage of the infrastructure of former state companies to the regions.

• Create a special fund affiliated with the Pension Fund of Russia. To cover the expenses of the pension system, all state assets, a part of incomes from the export of natural resources and the compensating tax payments will be transferred under control of this foundation. The insurance component of the pension will thus be reduced, and the investment part will remain untouched. Moreover, the funds taken away during the years of freeze of the investment part will be returned to the citizens. The work of the fund and the entire pension system will become absolutely transparent.

Russia needs an «anti-corruption revolution». Today, corruption has turned into a far-reaching, devious system that allows certain small groups of oligarchs and bureaucrats to appropriate the results of economic activities. Corruption threads the Russian state system from top to bottom, emburdens the business and the population and prevents economic growth and diversification of the economy.

The fight against corruption is the main structural reform both in the political and in the economic sphere. If it doesn't succeed, other reforms will not have the desired effect. We suggest the following primary step in this area:

• To establish a special independent organ for the fight against corruption, which is not a part of the law enforcement system. Its management will only be appointed as agreed by the president and the State Duma.

• To unconditionally ratify the UN Convention against Corruption, including the articles on fighting the illicit enrichment of government officials, and generally upgrade the punishments for corruption crimes.

• To transfer state-owned companies and other state assets under the control of the special fund affiliated with the PFR. This will allow to establish strict public control over them.

• To treat he management of state-owned companies in the same way as government officials in terms of the regulations regarding the disclosure of incomes and expenditures.

• To begin an active search abroad of the Russian money stolen as a result of corruption crimes and ensure their return into the country. This money will also go into the PFR-affiliated fund.

• To reduce state involvement into the economy as an owner and an operator.

The most important element of a true democracy is the return of instruments of control over the expenditures of the budget formed from the tax payments of the citizens and the businesses. Today, these funds are shamelessly privatized by the bureaucrats and the business structures linked to them. Not only does this violate the principles of social justice and fair competition, it also deprives the country of its instruments of development — investments into the infrastructure and the social capital.

To turn the budget from an instrument of corruption and unfair enrichment of the elites into an instrument of development of the national economy, we need to:

• Make the budget transparent, cut the spending on items hidden from public, stop sponsoring politically motivated and economically unreasonable «priority projects» under «National Economy», redistribute a part of the funds from defense and law enforcement towards healthcare and education, which will allow to increase the spending on them to the level of developed countries

• Demonopolize the economy, restore competition and decrease the bureaucratic and political pressure on the business — this will allow to revive and stimulate the entrepreneurial initiative and transition from oligarchic to social capitalism.

• Cut the red tape for the interactions between business and government and minimize control of the latter over the former, significantly reduce salary taxes and small business taxes. These changes will not only stimulate economy development, but also make the distribution of incomes from the economic growth fairer.

• Make welfare of Russia and its citizens the primary goal of foreign policy, which will make our economy more competitive. Only economic solvency can guarantee Russia the status of a great and independent nation in the modern world. Among key measures to achieve these goals are: reducing tensions in the relationships with EU, USA and Ukraine, legitimately solving Crimea's issue in favor of the local population, fulfilling Russia«s obligations under signed agreements, refusing to support dictatorships untenable regimes, introducing visa regime for the countries of Middle Asia and removing it for developed countries and countries of the EU.

While formally calling itself a federation, Russia by now has turned into a unitary state. We need to start moving in the opposite direction — towards restoration of balance of authority between federal and regional powers and a significant expansion of the role of local governance as the basis of the entire system of popular rule. To achieve this, we need to:

• Eliminate involvement of superior authorities into formation of inferior ones, while giving full autonomy to regions and municipalities. For that, we need to upgrade the states of elected public authorities in regions and municipalities and grant them immunity until a court decision.

• Redistribute tax proceeds and budget authorities from the center to regions and, most importantly, municipalities. The municipality will become the key element of the power system.

• Provide municipalities and federal subjects with opportunities to compete for investments and human resources. They will be given more authority to adopt local laws, as well as the right to lead a flexible tax policy.

жOver the last 17 years, the law enforcement system of Russia has turned from an institute for protection of citizens' rights and freedoms into an institute for keeping the power within the same set of people. As a result, the citizens are deprived not only of the right for fair prosecution and trial, but also of the ability to feel safe, despite significant budget expenditures on these government agencies.

To fix this situation, we need to:

• Make the judicial system independent again. Among the first and most obvious steps are: decreasing the influence on it of the executive power headed by the president, deconstructing the «judicial vertical» and returning real power to the judges. Of course, lustration of judges caught participating in unjust or politically motivated processes will be necessary.

• Make law enforcement agencies serve the citizens, protect their rights and freedoms and ensure their safety. For that, we need to decentralize control over the system in favor of regional and municipal authorities, downsize the administrative staff, cut the red tape for the work of field investigators and abolish the «ticket quota system». Police needs to be freed of excessive duties, National Guard — significantly downsized, prosecutor's office — freed from the general supervision also conducted by the relevant authorities, FSB — deprived of their duties of political investigation, the army — made entirely professional.

• Conduct a humanization of the Criminal Code. Lighten the punishments for a number of crimes, especially in the economic sphere; make arrest, including arrest during pretrial proceedings, an ultimate sanction to be used mostly for violent and socially dangerous crimes. After that, an amnesty needs to be conducted for everyone arrested under the articles ruled unreasonably fierce

• Radically change the work of federal Penal Service: instead of a mere «penal service» that only propagates crime, it needs to become an institute for rehabilitation of lapsers. Apart from the personnel and structural reform of the system, this can be achieved by making the system more open to the public and keeping the convicts sentences for the first time or for a non-serious crime separate from repeated offenders and those convicted for serious crimes.

In the modern world, being friends and trading is more beneficial than leading wars. Russia needs to use its unique location between Europe and Asia to become a respected partner for all. In the modern world, the most respected countries are those whose citizens live in freedom and prosperity.

• Hundreds of billions of rubles that Russia spends on wars in Syria and Ukraine should rather be spend on improving the quality of life back home.

• Our country would benefit from political and economic rapprochement with wealthy European countries.

• Russia needs a visa regime with the countries of Transcaucasia and Middle Asia. Migrant workers should arrive on working visas, and not uncontrollably like they do now.

• Russia needs to become the leading country of Europe and Asia. Our country needs to expand its influence through economic power and cultural expansion, including support of Russian language across the world.

For many years, Alexey Navalny has been propounding a visa regime with countries of Transcaucasia and Middle Asia and an equitable cooperation with the European Union. Migrant workers need to arrive only on work visas, to a specific employee and a specific workplace where they really cannot be replaced. Russia needs to become an economically attractive country for the whole world, a country everyone respects and wants to cooperate with, because its citizens live a rich and dignified life.

There currently is a huge disbalance in the distribution of power: executive and judicial power have become appendages of the presidential vertical and meekly fulfill its will.

Among the main parts of the political reform, we suggest to:

• Transition from a superpresidential to a presidential-parliamentary republic. For that, some of the president's powers will need to be limited, we will need to return to a 4-year presidential term and limit the amount of terms for one person to two, no matter if those are successive or not. The powers of the parliament need to be expanded, but before that, it needs to be re-elected at fair elections for a 4-year term instead of the current 5-year one. The Federal Assembly needs to become an actually working organ, whose members will be elected by the regions through direct elections.

• Conduct reforms of the election and party legislation aimed at providing a more equal and free access of citizens to politics at any level. To protect the newly built system of democratic elections, penalties for interfering in the elections needs to be increased, and a true independence of election committees needs to be ensured.

• Ban the church from any participation in state affairs. Any attempts of ideological control of public and private lives of citizens, including through culture and art, must be abandoned.

• Restore the freedom of information and mass media. For this, we will need to: abolish the laws limiting the freedom of speech in any way, make the Internet self-regulated, decrease and limit the government's share in mass media, exclude the possibility of several mass media and shares of federal channels in total amount of over 25% to be concentrated in one hands. Apart from that, state grants to independent media need to be introduced to prevent monopolization of the market. The decisions on issuing these grants will be taken by independent public commissions rather than government officials.

• Conduct a lustration. It objectiveness and efficiency will be guaranteed by a specially created commission of representatives of different branches of power. Apart from this, the commission will also detect and abolish harmful laws that were adopted within the last 17 years and investigate the facts of political repressions.