ABSTRACT
The history of Russia corroborates, better than any other nation's, the fact that genuine social progress is actually impossible in a situation where people are fenced in with political and ideological dogmas and where the "national idea", now being much talked about, is formulated in terms of the "catching up" development policy. In any case, as the post-industrial society was taking shape in the West, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation after it stood ever-slimmer chances of occupying in the modern world a place worthy of their history. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian Empire was one of Europe's most backward states in terms of production structure and labor productivity. A close look at this country's 300-year economic history will show that Russia has always tried to join the great powers' community "its own way", ignoring the historical experience of other states which had found themselves in the van of progress.
