Hrmmm sounds like Argentina's... shocker. With some minor differences...
> 1. Default on your foreign debt and avoid dependence on external loans
> thereafter.
DONE
> 2. Expropriate the worst of the speculator-comprador elites running the
> place into the ground, force the rest to become ordinary CEOs.
Social security: nationalized. Check. Tried to increase export duties for commodities following Krugman/Stiglitz views: tied, but failed, after a PR/media operation/mass hysteria campaign that lasted months, until Congress failed to approve the measure.
> 3. Nationalize your leading industries (in Russia's case, gas, oil,
> metals) and force the rest to pay their taxes.
Not yet. Pay their taxes: check.
> 4. Get state banks (Sberbank etc.) to lend
Done
> and create sovereign wealth funds to save export earnings.
By "Sovereign wealth funds" do you mean central bank currency reserves?.
If so, check.
> 5. Channel domestic savings into science and technology (Russtech,
> nanotech, aerospace), education and infrastructure
Being Done. National R+D like INTA (Agro technology), INTI (Industrial Technology) and other research units are resurging after being almost destroyed in the 1990s' privatization wave. For the first time the country has a law barring the federal government from cutting public education spending. In fact, it's set as a given percentage of GDP (I forget the specifics right now). Add to it the generic drugs laws, by which M.D. prescriptions have to be done with the generic drug name, not the commercial name/brand.
> This is why the mainstream neolib press (what Peter Lavelle dubbed the
> commentariat) has demonized Putin and demeaned Medvedev.
Sounds exactly like why the CATO puppets and Ayn Rand maniacs in the media routinely jab Argentina's Kicheners (both Nestor K. and now his wife).
When I see who criticizes Argentina and their backgrounds, I can see we're on the right path. FC