MOSCOW -- I've been a regular visitor to Vladimir Putin's Russia, and, when I was describing what troubled me most about the place to a wise foreign policy friend, he urged me to read the play "Three Sisters" by Chekhov. It's the tale of the aspiring Prozorov family, whose three cultured and educated sisters -- Olga, Masha and Irina -- grew up in Moscow but for 11 years found themselves marooned in the countryside. The sisters are always waxing poetic about their plans to go back to Moscow (the Emerald City), but they never make it and their dream fades.
Putin brings out the Three Sisters in me. Every time I come here, I expect to find that, this time, Russia is really pivoting from being a petro-state, with a heavy authoritarian gloss -- and a president who relies on anti-Western rhetoric to maintain his political base -- to a country that has decided to invest in education, innovation and its human capital and is ready to be a partner with the West. But it never materializes, and lately it has started to go backward.
To read the original article: Thomas L. Friedman: Innovation still prisoner of Cold War in Russia - ContraCostaTimes.com
