Medvedev Year One

Thursday marked the one-year anniversary since President Dmitry Medvedev took the oath of office. He came to power promoting the doctrine of "Four I's" -- that is, to develop the country's institutions, infrastructure, innovation and investment. But Medvedev was hostage to a system that had been created over the preceding eight years by his mentor, former President Vladimir Putin. What has come of Medvedev's Four I's after a year in office?

1. Innovation. With the scientific potential of the Soviet era heavily weakened and the country's educational system in a shambles, innovation has been on a steady decline for the last nine years. One simple way of measuring the scientific decline is by reading a few recent doctoral dissertations that are archived in the State Commission for Academic Degrees and Titles. You will quickly see that most of them are devoid of any academic merit at best and incoherent at worst. It should not surprise anyone that the Russian economy used 60 percent fewer domestically produced technologies in 2008 than it did in 2000. The share of foreign patents issued to Russians fell from 4.6 percent in the early 1990s to 2.6 percent today, and the combined circulation of all scientific journals published in this enormous country have fallen by about 95 percent and amount to about half of the total published in tiny Belgium.