Bob Foresman flits back and forth around the globe as you and I might flit from Auburn to Syracuse. Recently he visited with us in Florida to check out their new residence. We sat around the pool and chatted. Naturally the conversation turned to Russia. As you may have read, Bob, one of our gifted native sons, lives and works in Moscow and is well connected in financial and political circles. He has just been nominated as a candidate to Gazprom's board of directors. Russian owned Gazprom, Europe's major supplier of oil and gas, is the third largest company in the world.

Russia has undergone an amazing transformation within the last seven years and the media in this country have not produced an accurate picture of its people, its exploding economy or, most importantly, its leader Vladimir Putin #- whose name is mispronounced by practically everyone (it's Poo-teen not Pyu-tin).

Bob says: “When I was studying the Soviet Union in college and graduate school, we used to say ‘There is no such thing as an expert on Russia #- there are just varying degrees of ignorance.' No one fully understands what is happening there today. The Western media has been painting Russia in black and white for some time now and it gives a very misleading picture. That picture basically says: ‘Putin is a dictator, he is against free speech and democratic institutions, his moves to have the Russian government take increasing control over the country's natural resources (especially oil and gas) are sinister. His foreign policy is menacing and harmful to the United States and the country is led by a super-rich corrupt few while the vast majority live in dire poverty.' While some of this picture borders on the truth, things are not as simple as that. In reality, Putin is probably more liberal than 90 percent of the population and any electable alternative would not be preferable to our country. It is an incredibly difficult task to govern Russia, with its 11 time zones, diverse ethnic groups and limited experience with democracy and the free market. It is also easy to forget what Russia was like in 2001 when Putin was elected #- it was dangerously unstable both politically and financially and the ‘loose nukes' scenario looked plausible. In spite of his faults, I am not sure who could do a better job of governing the country.”

Of Russia's booming economy, Foresman comments: “Russia owes a large part of its current economic success to world record energy prices. As the world's second largest oil producer (behind Saudi Arabia) and by far the largest natural gas producer, Russia is one of the few countries in the world that is a huge beneficiary of high energy prices. A lot of my work is in the energy sector, including projects aimed at supplying liquefied natural gas from Russia to the United States in the future in order to lessen our dependence on Middle Eastern energy.”

Moscow has more multi-billionaires (44) and multi-millionaires (estimated 88,000) than any city in the world outside of New York. A recent article in the Moscow Times gives insight to this phenomenon:

“The businessman in the white linen pants and flashy designer shirt ran his fingers over the 300,000 euro Lambroghini Murcielago, eyeing it as a new stablemate for his Bentley and Ferrari. Said the beaming businessman, who only gave his name as Vladimir, ‘I never thought about owning such cars growing up in the Soviet Union #-now that we see how the rest of the world lives, we want the same standard of luxury too.'”

Russia today is an incredible contradiction. Its vastness is almost incomprehensible. A flight from Moscow to Vladivostok in the far east of Russia takes as long as a flight from Moscow to New York. Ivan the peasant, who scratches out a living in Vladivostok, is as far removed from Vladimir the businessman in Moscow, as human beings can be #- both ethnically and economically. Yet both are under the same governance.

Russia is on the cusp of Eurasian countries that are exploding into the 21st century as the world becomes flat. If we do not learn about what is happening in this part of the world, events will overcome us.

As the story goes, during the cold war years when we were competing with the Russians for dominance of outer space, NASA discovered that ball-point pens would not work in zero gravity.

To combat the problem our scientists spent a decade and $12 million to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater and on almost any surface, at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300 degrees centigrade.

The Russian astronauts used pencils.

Harold Miller is a businessman and Auburn native. He may be reached at hmillermod@aol.com