It is official: Mmd is now Grayling. After the merger of three leading consulting companies: Grayling, Trimedia and Mmd, we have become the world’s second biggest independent communications firm with 900 staff in 70 offices in 40 countries.

You can check out our new website at http://www.grayling.com/ or watch this small funny video that we have produced to celebrate this major change.

from Mmd to Grayling from Grayling_ru on Vimeo.

So don’t worry when next time you call us, someone will answer “Grayling, may I help you?” or if you receive an email from someone you know from Mmd from a @grayling.com address.
But what’s really important is that we are now a truly global company, capable of talking locally to your stakeholders and audiences, while maintaining a global view of your business. We are a different company now, and we will work hard to offer you a different kind of thinking for a different kind of world.

During the last 18 years Russia has come a long way from iron curtain that finally fell to reveal a strong leader with an iron hand. The long and winding road from Fulton to Munich was even longer.

In terms of foreign policy, Russia will continue to promote the concept of a multi-polar world with 20 key countries and 4 key centers of power, Russia being one of them, along with the US, the EU and China. Related to this, it is the Russian mindset that the one polar world proved its instability during the global economic crisis, meaning that a strategic game of chess to positioning and align is now on the agenda for many of the G8 and G20.

Moreover, with President Obama in charge, the much needed ‘restart’ of the Russian-American relationship actually seems to be underway: Russia has finally succeeded in being taken seriously as an equal international partner. Together with the other three international centers of power, Russia’s role in contributing towards global economic stability has been recognized, though crucially, the interests of other global authorities in Russia’s policies will no doubt be balanced against the country’s own key focus on its national and domestic interests. In other words, to rephrase Lord Palmerston: Russia does not have permanent friends and allies, rather permanent national interests.

In terms of national and domestic policy in Russia, in contrast to foreign policy and the fresh start seen in this sphere, Russia is maintaining its long term position. The senior Russian leadership must still answer the age old question as to whether the human being lives for the state, or whether the state is established for the human being. This is of course the struggle between the competing Soviet ideology and that of modernization and the increasing struggle between the Russian political elite to push Russia along one of these divergent roads. Though as this clash of ideology continues, it is important to remember the threats and pitfalls posed by the continuation of a soviet mentality within the Russian state.

The conservative soviet scenario will inevitably pull Russia backwards into the third world by maintaining a number of institutional limitations: an economy based on the raw materials; overbearing corruption; a fundamental lack of trust within society; violation of citizen rights by the political and economic elite; weak and malfunctioning legislative and representative bodies; and a dependant court system that capitulates to weak state bodies, with key decisions being based on informal and non-transparent motives. Furthermore, a monopolized state economy and mass media will result in an overwhelmingly suppressed civil society.

These systematic flaws and issues are based upon the lack of opportunity for citizens, and in turn state institutions, to scrutinize and hold government to account as a means of balancing the interests and rights of the elite against everyday Russian citizens. The lack of an effective checks and balance system has and will lead to instability in long term. Furthermore, a lack of competition both in the economic and political spheres must be readdressed as an urgent necessity.

In the words of Chekhov: each and every citizen must take responsibility for oneself and one’s life and squeeze the slave out of ourselves drop by drop to establish equal partnership relations with the state.
Russia must undergo sweeping institutional reform to achieve its full potential and establish the highly competitive and aggressive state the country is capable of. However, the civil liberties and self-respect of citizens (as cherished by developed Western nations) must be an absolute prerequisite within such the reformed model. Only once this transformation is underway can Russia begin to challenge the long list of issues and threats the country faces in the XXI century.