Russia had everything—resources, education, strategic power. Yet its GDP per capita is one-sixth of America's. Four centuries of autocracy taught Russians nothing but control, corruption, and hardship. When you've never known trust-based institutions, you can't imagine building them. Seventy years of choices compound. Some nations built prosperity. Russia chose nothing.
The Russian Revolution wasn’t the people’s victory—it was a takeover by the ruthless few. Lenin didn’t lead a nation into communism; he seized power in a fractured empire where exhaustion, war, and desperation made resistance impossible. The illusion of choice defined 1917, just as it shapes political upheavals today.
On May 21, 2014, just months after the Russian invasion of Crimea China and Russia signed a natural gas deal worth over $400 billion. This heralded a pivot east for Russian business amid ongoing tensions with the West over Ukraine. Though few details of the deal were made public the 30-year gas-export contract was seen... Continue Reading →
Russia and its empire, the Soviet Union, was once the greatest and most formidable power on earth. It was rivaled only by that of the United States, but even the US was outmatched in many ways and forms by the Soviet empire. The Soviet Union produced social and technological achievements and innovations such as putting... Continue Reading →
Josh Nash 