Given that they control about 10 per cent of the entire land mass, it would be strange if they didn't have a lot of natural resources. But having a lot of natu

Given that they control about 10 per cent of the entire land mass, it would be strange if they didn't have a lot of natural resources. But having a lot of natural resources is often described as an economic curse: it motivates the country to embrace extractive practices and build extractive institutions, where human lives don't matter and innovation is superfluous. The main avenue to riches and power is control of a mine... by any, often brutal, means. Looking at Russia, it very much didn't escape that curse. A shocking proportion of highly educated Russian professionals lives abroad. I would bet that when it comes to sophisticated products with high added value, the Russian diaspora produces more of them than the Russians who are still present in Russia. Perhaps even the Russian diaspora in the Silicon Valley alone does so.