Can Russia Compete?

It’s a question worth asking

It was thirty years ago, in the summer of 1991, that the Soviet Union came apart. In August, a final coup attempt by Kremlin hardliners failed to displace Mikhail Gorbachev and boosted Boris Yeltsin’s power instead. Gorbachev resigned on Christmas Day; and the USSR dissolved, 74 years after the Bolshevik Revolution.

What’s Russia got to show for those thirty years?  EP spent last week reading Lonely Ideas: Can Russia Compete? (MIT, 2013), by Loren Graham, Professor Emeritus of the history of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  EP then ran into scheduling problems that proved insuperable.

Russia has long competed successfully scientifically, culturally, diplomatically, militarily, Graham says. Technological and commercial innovation, however, almost always has been a problem.

Back next week with some answers.  This is not a new issue for EP.