The Land of Magical Thinking: Inside Putin’s Russia

The Land of Magical Thinking: Inside Putin’s Russia | World Affairs Journal:
"Russia’s mortality rate is horrific.
According 2012 World Health Organization statistics, a fifteen-year-old Russian male has a life expectancy that’s three years less than a fifteen-year-old Haitian boy’s.
The life expectancy of a fifteen-year old Russian female is sixty-one, three years less than in Cambodia.
Russians die from cardiovascular disease and from accidents, murder, and suicide.
They smoke, they drink, they despair.
Russia’s great wealth is based on extraction of oil and gas.
Even so, the value of Russia’s exports in 2013 barely exceeded Belgium’s. 
And energy prices are falling.
...“Long-term economic progress,” says Eberstadt, “depends on improving productivity through new knowledge . . . Patent awards and application provide a crude but telling picture . . . Consider applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty . . . Russia comes in No. 21—after Austria—racking up less that 0.6 percent of the world’s total. 
The population of Russia is more than fifteen times that of Austria.
Russia’s ‘yield’ of patents per university graduate is vastly lower than Austria’s—thirty-five times lower.
By this particular metric Russia is only fractionally better placed than Gabon.”