<i>Despite the significant historic impact of many Russian scientific contributions—the laser...</i><p>Fellow by the name of Ted Maiman at Bell Labs might beg to differ.
It's really sad what has happened with Russian science and technology under Putin.<p>One very important factor the article failed to mention is the corrupt, crony capitalist economic system that Putin has cultivated. Big companies are protected by the regime in exchange for pay-offs and political support. That means they don't have to innovate to compete domestically or internationally.<p>There are some exceptions, but on the whole the amount of tech invention coming out of Russia today is not one-tenth what you would expect out of such a large industrialized nation.