Incredible Failures of Russian Technology - The Resource Curse Taking Its Toll

The recent technical failures of Russian technology are quite staggering. The Bulava ICBM failed numerous tests before finally successfully hitting target earlier this month, the Soyuz rocket used to launch spaceships and satellites crashed on takeoff and now a fire breaks out at the Yekaterinburg nuclear submarine. Russia has never been known as a leader in quality, but the sciences and their applications had been actively promoted during the Soviet era push for large scale industrialization.

Now the entire economy is heavily dependent on oil and gas exports which are very tightly controlled by the Kremlin. This creates corruption on massive scale and causes a deficiency of investment in education and technology. Thus the human and physical capital slowly and surely deteriorates - it is much easier to pump oil than build a spaceship after all.

Political Theatrics in Russia Continue

The relatively fair and thorough coverage (minus any mentions of Putin) of anti-Kremlin protests earlier this month by state-controlled television in Moscow did seem a bit puzzling. Now we may know why. According to BBC's website Medvedev has outlined "far-reaching" political changes to appointment of regional governors, registration of political parties and proposed the creation of independent media. Of course this is hard to take seriously, given that his term will expire very soon. But these gestures should be enough to temporarily assuage public anger until Putin is firmly back in power, or so the czar-duo is probably thinking.