DAVOS, SWITZERLAND — This year at Davos, the Russians are working hard to make a splash.
There is a House of Russia near a main hotel and a media center for Russia at the opposite end of this ski village. And then there is the bevy of Russian politicians, business folk and cultural figures on hand trying to encourage more foreign investment and correct what many of them privately concede is a poor image abroad.
Even Dmitri A. Medvedev, the former president and now prime minister, whose political standing in Russia was tarnished by a swap of offices with Vladimir V. Putin announced in September 2011, subjected himself to a highly unusual spectacle here.
Scores of Russian experts had worked with the World Economic Forum, as the conference here is known, on a presentation they called Scenarios for Russia.
The session on Wednesday, with Mr. Medvedev gamely sitting through the judgment before speaking himself, sketched out three ways that Russia, whose economy is heavily dependent on oil and gas extraction, could develop in the near future.
Based on assumptions like falling energy prices, regional inequalities and even an open split among Russian elites, none of the three possibilities was particularly optimistic. In addition, when the audience was asked to vote on the most needed development for Russia’s near future, it overwhelmingly chose the need to improve governance and overhaul government.
Given recent developments in Moscow, that may come as no surprise. Many political analysts see moves like the recent clampdown on demonstrations and the banning of American adoptions of Russian children as signals that the government is digging in, rather than opening up to change.
Mr. Medvedev’s response, though, was more tepid than many in the audience presumably hoped to hear. He simply repeated past promises, so far unrealized, that Russia will respond positively to demographic, political and economic shifts that could change the status quo.
Sergey Guriyev, a Russian economist, presented perhaps the gloomiest situation: A schism in the Russian elite that could force eventual, possibly sudden, change, in a country still haunted by memories of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and all that followed.
The status quo “is not sustainable simply because the Russian middle class will grow and demand reforms,” Mr. Guriyev said.
Over the past 10 years, oil and gas riches trickled down to a new middle class, he argued. “Now, more income doesn’t make people happy,” he said, adding that this Russian class “is unprecedentedly educated and rich for a country with such outdated political institutions.”
Unlike Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, whose experience on the hustings of British politics lend him an ability to think on his feet and deliver punchy lines, Mr. Medvedev barely opened up to questioning from an audience that was about half the size of the one that packed the hall to hear Mr. Cameron on Thursday, a day after his gamble on European Union membership.
In private conversation, Russian businessmen deplored what they saw as a missed opportunity for Mr. Medvedev to give a forceful speech to the Davos crowd. But foreign investors invited to private sessions with the prime minister later Wednesday and earlier Thursday were much less inclined to criticize him.
Like the Russian business community, these investors are reluctant to speak on the record, citing the uncertainty of doing business in the country. What they also do not speak much about is the healthy return on their money.
While Russian business and the state accounted for most of the estimated $400 billion said by officials to have been invested in 2012, foreign investors get a good return on their money — some in high double digits, one banker said.
Russians often particularly cite China as a rival for foreign attention and money. Ruben Vardanian, a financier now at Russia’s giant Sberbank, said that while many businesspeople, domestic and foreign, saw that their activities “are much more profitable in Russia than in China,” the Chinese gave a greater sense of certainty.
While the circle of foreigners now interested in Russia is widening, Mr. Vardanian told a meeting of mostly Russian reporters, foreigners still often lament that “we can’t understand the rules of the game.”
“They don’t want to deal with, say, Mr. Vardanian, who is then replaced by Mr. Ivanov, and then by Mr. X,” he said. “They want to deal with rules.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 25, 2013
An earlier version of this article misspelled the first name of Ruben Vardanian, a financier at Sberbank, as Reuben.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 25, 2013
An earlier version of the correction for this article misspelled the first name of Ruben Vardanian. It is Ruben, not Reuben.
