Well, thinking back about the youth forum and the questions that young people raised I feel mixed emotions. To add to the official press release I posted some minutes ago these are just some side thoughts that are plaguing my mind.

I have a strong impression that the Ministry’s point of view is that Russia’s accession to WTO will not affect common people in any way. In fact, the consultant from the Ministry's Department of WTO negotiations, Anna Sidoruk, failed to say anything on how the prices and salaries will change. She also insisted on differentiating between the social reforms that are going on in the country and the changes in legislature that need to be done for Russia to access WTO. And again another surprise - her comments provoked immediate objection among the British participants, not the Russian ones! For two times they expressed an opinion that this change in trade economy will foster higher unemployment rates thus directly affecting well-being of many households. David Tarr from the World Bank commented on this; he said that for sure unemployment rates will rise, but only for the transition period, and actually this period is the thing that Russian government has to be concerned about as it will have to provide strong support and social benefits for the people involved in the industries that will suffer the most from the country’s accession to WTO (e.g. agriculture and manufacturing industry). However, taking into consideration the failure of the Russian government to provide such support to the people during the transition period in 1990s-2000s, when Russia was rushing its economy to become capitalized, I wonder if it won’t fail again now opening its market for foreign investors and pushing itself onto the world market. Will it still care about the decent people? Will we not be sacrificed for the “high goal” of becoming a part of a bigger world?

The other thing that stirred my mind was the answer that Anna Sidoruk gave to one of the British participants who asked if there is any data proposing how Russia’s accession to WTO will help reduce poverty in the country. After some contemplation, Anna said that there was no research done so far by the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade on this question (and this is after 10 years worth of WTO entry negotiations!) and she doubted if any other independent research had been conducted yet. And she added here immediately that, to her opinion, well-being of Russian citizens doesn’t depend on the external economic changes that the country is going through, rather strictly on the economic reforms that are being implemented on the domestic market.

You should've heard the silence that fell after this.