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Read original →Academician Aganbeyan on the Economy: Focus on Growth and Russia's Global Standing
Why Russia's economy has grown by just 37% over 34 years while China has increased its GDP thirteenfold. Academician Aganbeyan analyzes the innovation gap, investment challenges, and prescribes remedies for an economic breakthrough.
AI summary
Academician Aganbegyan analyzed Russia's economic lag: over 34 years, GDP grew by only 37%, while China's grew 13-fold. Russia is catastrophically behind in innovation, robotization, and investment, remaining at the level of developed countries from the 1970s. To achieve an economic breakthrough, it is necessary to increase investments by 10-15% per year and modernize technologically outdated enterprises.
The Current Situation
Over the 34 years of the new Russia's existence (compared to 1990), the country's gross domestic product has grown by 37% (+1% per year). By comparison: U.S. GDP has doubled, post-socialist countries have grown 2.5 times, India 8.6 times, and China 13 times.
According to international rankings, Russia is at the level of 1970–1975 relative to the U.S. and other developed countries. This includes life expectancy: the current 70 years was already achieved back in 1964–1965, and after the decline, only reached again in 2013.
The innovation situation is catastrophic: since 2020, not a single one of the world's 1,658 "unicorns" has emerged in Russia. Of 2,500 large innovative Russian private companies, only three have R&D budgets exceeding €35 million.
Russia has 19 robots per 10,000 workers. By comparison: South Korea has 1,014, and developed countries range from 200 to 600. We have only 7 supercomputers, while China and the U.S. each have 150.
In 2021, Russia ranked 45th in the global innovation index (80 indicators); in 2025, it dropped to 59th. The reason is simple: venture capital, the foundation of innovation, has collapsed from $3.4 billion in 2021 to $0.27 billion today.
In developed countries, the contribution of high-tech goods and the "knowledge economy" (R&D, education, etc.) to national income growth is 30% in Europe and 40% in the U.S. By comparison: manufacturing generates 25% in Europe and 18% in the U.S.
If the share of fixed capital investment is below 25% (as in industrialized countries), sustainable growth is impossible. In Russia it's 18%, in the U.S. 20%, but there growth is supported by the "knowledge economy." In Russia, its share is only 14%.
What Should Be Done?
Russia should study the experience of countries that made breakthroughs in 10–30 years: South Korea, Taiwan, Japan (transformed from poor and illiterate to advanced), Chile under Pinochet (life expectancy rose to 81 years), and postwar France and China.