In September 2009, President Dmitrii Medvedev published a widely publicized article entitled, “Rossiia Vpered!” (“Russia, Forward!” or, more loosely, “Go Russia!”). Medvedev laid out a sweeping indictment of the institutions and attitudes that had made the impact of the 2008–2009 worldwide recession so devastating to Russia, and described the reforms that he considered necessary to set the country right. He argued that the crisis proved that the economy was still rooted in the Soviet system:

Not only is the economy inefficient, declared Medvedev, but its democratic institutions are tenuous and its civil society is weak and still “semi-Soviet.” Medvedev argued that Russia required a thoroughgoing modernization of its economy, society, and political system, but one accomplished through noncoercive means. Future growth should be fueled by innovation, particularly in energy, information, space technology, and medicine.