Russia’s openness to the world: The unpredicted consequences of the country’s liberalization

The author challenges the dogma that complete openness of the country to the external world has only a positive impact on its current state of affairs and its future. He uses post-Soviet Russia to show that in several respects openness, in particularly systematic emigrations of active people from the country, creates a lot of the problems which, however, can be partially solved if society has true democratic institutions.