"Let's stop for a minute and remember. We estimate. Objectively.

Putin's Russia of the sample of 2017 is a product of terrible degeneration even in comparison with the USSR.

Now - as they say "here in America", no one can convict me of worshiping Scoop. There are few people in the world who hate Scoop more than I hate it. I.

But let's be objective. The USSR was a relatively modern country for those years. Especially in the 60's. The level of education, health, science - after all, those who studied before the revolution, or those who studied with those who studied before the revolution. Plus, scientific and technological progress, plus industrial and scientific espionage, plus a banal plagiarism (in which no one could be caught because of the Iron Curtain), plus "only" 40 years of negative selection, rather than one hundred.

Ask those who are now 80-90 years old, and who - few of them - had access to the West in the 60s and 70s. Objectively, yes, the USSR was then behind the West for 20-30 years, no more. In some areas - behind only a few years; Sometimes, in the exceptions - even a little ahead.

That there was no doubt - yes, the USSR was an evil Evil Empire, there is no discrepancy here! I'm talking only about the level of human capital and all its derivatives, in those years.

The current Putin's Russia has lagged behind the entire civilized world ... forever. Archaization, degradation, decomposition, decay. Continuity of generations for 100 years is lost forever. There are no more students whose teachers have studied with those who studied before the revolution. Every second is a "designer" or an "architect" who does not know what a "golden section" is. Statistical "outlier" mathematician Perelman in Putin's Russia is not needed. Statistical "outlier" billionaire-philanthropist Zimin in Putin's Russia is not needed. Russian Mark Zuckerberg - Pavel Durov - in Russia is not needed. In general, no one is needed, except the friends of Putin, who have sat down wells, pipes, roads and bridges.

Look around. Outside of Russian Dubai, limited by Moscow Ring Road - ruin and desolation, decay, decay. Nails, hammers and axes in Leroy Merlin - Made in China. The pseudo-elite pseudo-elite children learn in various ways. "Academies of state administration under the President of the Russian Federation", or the Moscow State University and MGIMO - in the already completely decayed universities, where the ball is governed by dugini, Yakunin, Girkin and Prokhanov. And these today's, and even more tomorrow's, freaks will reproduce themselves in several generations of a dull future.

Which is not.

Because such former empires do not live for so long, taking into account all the current circumstances.

There is not a single person in the world, except Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who would bring Russia's end to such a leap forward.

Russia, of course, will collapse. Most likely, I - and I'm now 51 - I'll see it. And it can not be glued together, not backed up by any of the Putin-Gundyaevsk pins.

Putin made his choice. And Russia - with him.

"Do not let Gd live in the era of change," Rabinovich concluded..