Seriously vad, can Russia be governed effectively and reasonably? Generations of Czars, as well as some well-meaning and enlightened advisers, and more recently some dubious commissars have been motivated by the notion of harnessing Russia's enormous natural and human resources more effectively, efficiently and successfully. Yet, it never seems to quite work. As Marc Raeff, who was once the dean of Russian historians at Columbia University, observed: Russia is the land of unfinished reforms. Over and over again reforms, usually western, are imported into Russia but are never entirely implemented. Then, if they survive, they live on in Russia in some sort of distorted or even grotesque form. The native obstacles to change always manage to thwart their entirely successful application in the end.