Mr. Mintimer Shaimiev is a member of Federal Assembley of the Russian Federation, a Honourary academician of the International Informatization Academy, an International Prize winner of Tatar Nation Kul Gali Award. He was rewarded with Orders and Medals of the USSR.

Being the first President of Tatarstan Mr. Shaimiev contributes to the political sovereignty of Tatarstan and creation of the democratic state.

Mr. Shaimiev's pragmatism laced with Tatar determination, enabled the Tatarstan to sign an advantageous power-sharing treaty with Moscow in February 1994. Tatarstan won full owenships rights over its large oil reserves and industrial companies, the right to retain the bulk of tax revenues and to conduct an independent foreign economic policy. In so doing, Mr. Shaimiev neutralised extreme Tatar nationalists who called for full independence and averted a potentialy bloody conflict with Moscow. The contrast with Chechnya, the only other Russian republic which refused to sign the 1992 Federation Treaty, is painfully clear.

Mr. Shaimiev's pragmatic approach extends to Tatarstan's relatively autonomous economic policy under which it has tempered market reforms with continued government support for the giant state enterprises which employ the builk of the local workforce. "I think Russia could have fashioned its economic reforms along the Chinese way and avoided many of the social problems it has today," he says.