President Dmitry Medvedev used the 150th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom in Russia to cast himself as a champion of reform on Thursday but said steps toward broader democracy will be cautious.
Steered into office in 2008 by his predecessor and now Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Medvedev portrayed Russia’s ruling "tandem" as heirs to Tsar Alexander II, who freed the serfs in 1861 and is a symbol of reform.
"Today we are trying to develop our still-imperfect democratic institutions, modernise our economy and political system," he said in the imperial-era capital. "We are continuing the course that was outlined a century and a half ago."
Medvedev courted another historic Russian reformer on Wednesday, granting the highest state medal to the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. But in Thursday’s speech, he stressed that reforms should not be sudden or radical.
"Political and social changes must be measured, rational and gradual," he said.
Medvedev’s often tough critiques of Russian institutions have been praised at home and in the West, but critics say he has done little to open up the political system crafted by Putin or to combat rampant corruption and stifling bureaucracy.
Less than two months after a suicide bomber from Russia’s turbulent North Caucasus killed 37 people at a Moscow airport, Medvedev said "intolerance, extremism and their utmost form, terrorism, have been and will be the foes of free development".
He has struck a more liberal pose than Putin and did so again, invoking Alexander II — assassinated by an anarchist bomber after tighter controls fueled sparked militant opposition — to say crackdowns are counterproductive.
"A nation … cannot live on tightened screws," he said. "It is obvious that excessively strict order, an excess of controls, usually leads not to the victory of good — or to use today’s terms, not to victory over corruption but to its increase."
Nearly three years into a four-year term that has brought plenty of talk about institutional reforms, political pluralism and economic modernization but few tangible results, Medvedev offered no specific plans.
Putin tapped Medvedev as his successor when the constitution barred him from seeking a third straight presidential term in 2008. He has hinted he will return to the presidency in a March 2012 vote or endorse Medvedev again.
Alexander II is hailed as "the Liberator" for granting freedom to millions of peasants, but critics say he left serfs with few chances to survive independently, as the soil they tilled was held by landowners for years to come.
