The development of freedom for everyone in Russia is a national goal, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday at a research conference on the country's modernization reforms.
The modernization conference marks the 150th anniversary of the abolition of serfdom in Russia by Tsar Alexander II in 1861.
"We should not put freedom on the back burner and not be afraid of a free person, who somehow expresses his freedom in an inappropriate way. This is a road to nowhere," the president said.
"The political and social transformation should be circumspect, rational, gradual but steady," Medvedev said, adding that Russia is "a living organism and not just a machine for generating state ideas."
"Freedom from fear, humiliation, poverty, disease, freedom for everyone, in my opinion, is our current goal of development," he added.
Medvedev will lay a wreath at the tomb of Alexander II as a part of the event.
ST. PETERSBURG, March 3 (RIA Novosti)
