Lonely Ideas: Can Russia Compete?

by Loren Graham

Overview

An expert investigates Russia's long history of technological invention followed by commercial failure and points to new opportunities to break the pattern.

When have you gone into an electronics store, picked up a desirable gadget, and found that it was labeled “Made in Russia”? Probably never. Russia, despite its epic intellectual achievements in music, literature, art, and pure science, is a negligible presence in world technology. Despite its current leaders' ambitions to create a knowledge economy, Russia is economically dependent on gas and oil. In Lonely Ideas, Loren Graham investigates Russia's long history of technological invention followed by failure to commercialize and implement.

For three centuries, Graham shows, Russia has been adept at developing technical ideas but abysmal at benefiting from them. From the seventeenth-century arms industry through twentieth-century Nobel-awarded work in lasers, Russia has failed to sustain its technological inventiveness. Graham identifies a range of conditions that nurture technological innovation: a society that values inventiveness and practicality; an economic system that provides investment opportunities; a legal system that protects intellectual property; a political system that encourages innovation and success. Graham finds Russia lacking on all counts. He explains that Russia's failure to sustain technology, and its recurrent attempts to force modernization, reflect its political and social evolution and even its resistance to democratic principles.

But Graham points to new connections between Western companies and Russian researchers, new research institutions, a national focus on nanotechnology, and the establishment of Skolkovo, “a new technology city.” Today, he argues, Russia has the best chance in its history to break its pattern of technological failure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262019798
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	09/13/2013
Series:	The MIT Press
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Loren Graham, often described as the leading scholar on Russian science and technology outside that country, is the author of The Ghost of the Executed Engineer and other books. He is Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at MIT and Research Scholar at the Davis Center for Russia and Eurasian Studies at Harvard.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

I The Problem: Why Can't Russia, after Three Centuries of Trying, Modernize? 1

1 The Early Arms Industry: Early Achievement, Later Slump 3

2 Railroads: Promise and Distortion 17

3 The Electrical Industry: Failed Inventors of the Nineteenth Century 27

4 Aviation: A Frustrated Master, a Deformed Industry 41

5 Soviet Industrialization: The Myth That It Was Modernization 47

6 The Semiconductor Industry: Unheralded and Unrewarded Russian Pioneers 61

7 Genetics and Biotechnology: The Missed Revolution 69

8 Computers: Victory and Failure 75

9 Lasers: Genius and Missed Opportunities 81

10 The Exceptions and What They Prove: Software, Space, Nuclear Power 91

II What Are the Causes of the Problem? 99

11 The Attitudinal Question 103

12 The Political Order 109

13 Social Barriers 113

14 The Legal System 119

15 Economic Factors 127

16 Corruption and Crime 131

17 The Organization of Education and Research 135

III Can Russia Overcome Its Problem Today? Russia's Unique Opportunity 143

18 Creating New Foundations and Research Universities 145

19 RUSNANO (Nanotechnology) and Skolkovo (a New Technology City) 149

20 How Russia Could Break Out of Its Three-Centuries-Old Trap 161

Acknowledgments 165

Chronology 169

Notes 173

Glossary of Names 191

Index 195

What People are Saying About This

Christopher Otter

Lonely Ideas provides a social and institutional explanation for Russia's long history of failed technologies. It asks whether it is ultimately possible for Russia to reform itself sufficiently to become an international player in technological innovation. It is pithy, provocative, and packed with fascinating material on Russia's technological history. It will appeal to both a general and an academic readership.

Endorsement

Lonely Ideas provides a social and institutional explanation for Russia's long history of failed technologies. It asks whether it is ultimately possible for Russia to reform itself sufficiently to become an international player in technological innovation. It is pithy, provocative, and packed with fascinating material on Russia's technological history. It will appeal to both a general and an academic readership.

—Christopher Otter, Department of History, Ohio State University

From the Publisher

An outstanding contribution to the economics of technical progress and to the understanding of Russian history from Peter the Great to Putin. It explains why Russian modernization efforts have repeatedly failed, whereas Silicon Valley has flourished, and what would need to be done to make the modernization of the Russian economy a reality.

—Michael Ellman, Emeritus Professor Amsterdam University

Lonely Ideas seeks to explain why Russia and the Soviet Union failed to capitalize on a rich talent pool to become a leading scientific and technical power. Graham's scholarship is excellent—others have written about the subjects covered in this book but no one has provided the sweeping synthetic vision shown by this author. No other English-language writer has the breadth and depth of knowledge, experience, and insight demonstrated in this book.

—Rochelle G. Ruthchild, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University

Lonely Ideas provides a social and institutional explanation for Russia's long history of failed technologies. It asks whether it is ultimately possible for Russia to reform itself sufficiently to become an international player in technological innovation. It is pithy, provocative, and packed with fascinating material on Russia's technological history. It will appeal to both a general and an academic readership.

—Christopher Otter, Department of History, Ohio State University

Michael Ellman

An outstanding contribution to the economics of technical progress and to the understanding of Russian history from Peter the Great to Putin. It explains why Russian modernization efforts have repeatedly failed, whereas Silicon Valley has flourished, and what would need to be done to make the modernization of the Russian economy a reality.

Rochelle G. Ruthchild

Lonely Ideas seeks to explain why Russia and the Soviet Union failed to capitalize on a rich talent pool to become a leading scientific and technical power. Graham's scholarship is excellent—others have written about the subjects covered in this book but no one has provided the sweeping synthetic vision shown by this author. No other English-language writer has the breadth and depth of knowledge, experience, and insight demonstrated in this book.

Editorial Reviews

succinct and devastating... It should be required reading in the Kremlin.—Joshua Lustig, Current History—

This short, engaging book will please not only historians of science and technology, who know Graham's work well, but anyone interested in the social and economic conditions favorable to cultivating new, globally competitive industries.

—Chronicle of Higher Education—

Lonely Ideas is an excellent, brief overview of the qualified successes and costly failures involved in Russian modernization. It should become the standard volume for introducing lay readers to the growing field fo Russian science and technology studies.

—The Russian Review—

From the Publisher

Lonely Ideas is an excellent, brief overview of the qualified successes and costly failures involved in Russian modernization. It should become the standard volume for introducing lay readers to the growing field fo Russian science and technology studies.

—The Russian Review

Reviews

Lonely Ideas is an excellent, brief overview of the qualified successes and costly failures involved in Russian modernization. It should become the standard volume for introducing lay readers to the growing field fo Russian science and technology studies.

The Russian Review

This short, engaging book will please not only historians of science and technology, who know Graham's work well, but anyone interested in the social and economic conditions favorable to cultivating new, globally competitive industries.

Chronicle of Higher Education

succinct and devastating... It should be required reading in the Kremlin.

Current History - Joshua Lustig