Irina Shulgina

The postindustrial innovation economy began to develop in advanced countries after the middle of the twentieth century. Its main resources are scientific knowledge and information, and innovation technologies determine the tempos of postindustrial countries' GDP growth and economic power. During the last 15 years, revenues from the export of natural resources have constituted the chief source of economic growth in the new Russia. The absence of long-term strategy and the destruction of Soviet industrial potential resulted in a loss of time and a catastrophically rising gap between Russia and advanced countries. The new "banking capitalism" accumulated enormous funds that were not reinvested into industrial development and the innovation economy, but remained frozen and devalued in the course of inflation, or worked for foreign economies as "capital drain". It is not too late to turn around the tendency of the last 15 years and reorient the Russian economy from resource-driven to innovation-driven. Russia's intellectual capital is still the fourth largest in the world, as measured by the number of scientists and engineers involved in research and development. What is lacking is political will.