- What are your proposals?
- The government, higher courts, and the Central Bank must be moved to other cities. I suggest moving the government to Yekaterinburg, the Higher Arbitration Court to Irkutsk, the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament, to Novosibirsk and the State Duma to Nizhny Novgorod. This will attract investments to the regions, create jobs and boost the standard of living across the country.
- Do you really believe that moving federal organs to other regions would boost the development of infrastructure and will money begin to move there?
- We all know, don’t we, that where governing bodies are seated there is budget financing and where there is a budget there is business, eager to get hold of that budget along with all other possible finances. Corruption flourishes in the capital. I am not calling for an immediate move of all the federal organs to other cities. The distribution of the capital’s functions between other regions must proceed gradually. The whole process could take 5-10, even 20 years.
- Is your choice of the proposed locations based on some considerations or have you just picked the cities at random?
- All those proposals are subject to further discussion. I believe it does not really matter which locations exactly are chosen. But I think it is crucial that the Constitutional Court be seated in Vladivostok, because it is a symbol of statehood, and Vladivostok is the further-most point on the map, and I would transfer the Central Bank to Krasnoyarsk.
- But then the costs of maintaining the state apparatus will increase considerably. Besides, those changes are likely to hit ordinary citizens: for instance, those unhappy with court rulings passed in their cases will have to travel throughout the country to lodge a complaint to a higher instance.
- If a person has a ruling handed down to him by some regional court, say, in Arkhangelsk and he has to come to Moscow to appeal it in the Supreme Court, he might just as well travel to another venue, that is, Vladivostok. It may even be that the costs will be lower than they are today. I am not an enemy of Moscow and the city needs protection. Today the situation is such that the city is growing rapidly, more and more houses are being erected, which leads to the elimination of city parks and public gardens. People suffocate in concrete, glass and pollution. To provide accommodation for the governing bodies alone, Moscow uses some 233 hectares and another 42 hectares is reserved for those purposes.
- Did you discuss your ideas with the presidential administration?
- Not with Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin]. But I am absolutely certain that [Moscow Mayor] Yuri Mikhailovich [Luzhkov] would feel better, more free, once part of Moscow’s functions are transferred to other regions.
Nowadays Russia faces a threat to its geopolitical integrity: the population in Siberia is declining rapidly. Another problem the regions are facing is that today a political and spiritual culture only exists in Moscow.
Let me remind you why [Grigory] Yavlinsky, [Irina] Khakamada, [Boris] Nemtsov, along with other Russian liberals, were defeated. They lived in Moscow and made their decisions on the basis of information they received from Moscow. And they lost because they had built their campaign on ideas they derived from Moscow, disregarding the rest of the country.
The country, meanwhile, has lived its own life. The standard of living in Moscow is many times higher than in other regions. Besides, there are foreign examples. For instance, in the Netherlands the royal residence, the parliament and the government are seated in the Hague, not in Amsterdam. In Germany after unification the capital was moved from Bonn to Berlin, with seven ministries remaining in Bonn. The German Central Bank is based in Frankfurt-am-Main, while the Constitutional Court is in Karlsruhe. The capital of Brazil was moved from Rio-de-Janeiro to the smaller town of Brasilia.