AP

FROM the outside, it looks pretty good. For more than a decade, Russia has been, more or less, a democracy and a market economy, and on civilized terms with its neighbors. Against the dismal standards of Russian history, that is a big achievement. But so far the fruits have been meagre(贫乏的；不足的), bringing little comfort to most Russians. All they can see around them is physical, cultural and moral decay.

The paradox is underpinned (支撑,支持)by three contradictory trends at work in today's Russia. The first is revival. This started under Mikhail Gorbachev, as the Communist monopoly of power and the planned economy collapsed together. That allowed the beginnings of independent life in many spheres. Freed from totalitarian (极权主义的)controls, the energy and brains of millions have brought countless changes for the better. There are plenty of new businesses, and such old ones as have survived are better run than they used to be. There is room for public-spiritedness and do-gooders. The crippling (断裂,往复曲折)fear of the gulag (咽喉的,在咽的,喉部的) is gradually being eroded by time. And Russians have started traveling. Instead of being isolated and bombarded (炮轰；轰击； 攻击；质问) with propaganda, millions every year see other countries with their own eyes. That has already begun to change their view of the world. And for many of those who cannot travel, at least ideas from all over the globe are only a mouse-click away.

The second trend, though, is stagnation. The collapse of communism, it turns out, was superficial and partial. Well-connected people and organizations—especially the security services—started clawing back power straight away, and many became rich as well as powerful. Changes for the better are often stopped in their tracks by greedy bureaucrats, and by the peculiar difficulties and perversities (反常) of life in Russia. The state, at all levels, dislikes criticism and opposition. Many Russians, for their part, still hanker (. 渴望, 追求) for the certainties, real or imagined, of the past: tradition, authority and unity, rather than experiment, competition and pluralism(多数状态；多重性).

The third trend is accelerating decline. Nobody in Russia's political or economic elite has seriously tried to halt the downward slide that underlay the Soviet Union's defeat in the cold war. Most of what the Soviet Union built was shoddy to start with, but modern Russia lacks the money and willpower to sustain even that unimpressive standard. As a result, the country is falling apart. Things built during the Soviet era are crumbling, leaking, rusting and rotting. Spills, collapses and fires that in other countries would cause a huge public outcry are shrugged off as everyday events. The education system is being corroded by low salaries and corruption. Worst of all, Russians are simply dying out: smoke-ridden, drink-soused lifestyles, together with unchecked infectious diseases, have created a demographic abyss. According to one gloomy prediction, the population could fall from 145m now to 55m by 2075.

At first these three big shifts were masked by the wild optimism, savage pessimism and sheer (全然的, 纯粹的, 绝对的,) upheaval (剧变) following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1993, Russia flirted with civil war when the president of the day, Boris Yeltsin, turned heavy artillery on the parliament building. For much of the 1990s, political extremism seemed a real threat: in the 1993 parliamentary election, the ultra-right (极右翼)party of Vladimir Zhirinovsky won a quarter of the votes. Mr. Yeltsin beat his Communist rival, Gennady Zyuganov, in the 1996 presidential election partly by rigging it. Oligarchs (寡头政治执政者)(politically influential tycoons) strutted the stage, apparently more important than politicians or officials. In the provinces, local chieftains ignored the centre and declared their tinpot (低劣的，劣质的) republics “sovereign”. Organized crime became a feature of everyday life.

On the economic front, the early 1990s brought hyperinflation and food panics. But there were also high hopes, fuelled by the thought of vast quantities of underused brainpower and raw materials that were now joining the world economy. Some talked of a coming boom that might take Russia's income per head above Spain's by 2010. Such wishful thinking led to the financial bubble of 1997-98, when hot money from abroad piled into flimsy (易坏的, 脆弱的, 浅薄的, 没有价值的)stocks and bonds, culminating in the default, devaluation and banking collapse of August 1998. This was followed a year later by a big money-laundering scandal. Russia turned from darling to pariah.

In the main, both the fears and the hopes have now receded. Life may not be much better, but at least it has become a lot calmer. Indeed, by past standards Russian politics and economics are now quite dull. Most people who matter agree about the economic and political direction the country has to take: it must embrace markets, private property, a stable, convertible currency, regular elections and freedom to travel abroad. Where once the Duma—the lower house of parliament—furiously tried to impeach the president, and the Kremlin sacked prime ministers on a whim, the worries now are about missed growth and inflation targets or the slow progress of useful bits of legislation.

That is not to say that everything in Russia's garden is lovely. Poisonous patches include the costly and debilitating war in Chechnya; officialdom's contempt for outsiders, especially weak and poor ones; corruption; the ill-treatment of minorities; and blindness towards the past. But however skewed and unfair the rules are today, at least they are not changing continually and unpredictably. Stability is a huge plus. Today's Russians, who have endured enough change to last them several lifetimes, certainly value the current calm. They also prize Vladimir Putin, the president whom they see as its architect.

If the present seems just about tolerable, though, there are big question marks about the future. Is the recent political and economic solidity just a temporary lull, after which Russia's unsolved problems will crowd forward again, bringing new disasters in their wake? Or will Russia muddle along like this for years—economically stagnant, politically not as democratic as many might wish, a pretty miserable place to live for most of its people, but at least a menace neither to itself nor its neighbours? Or might this new stability—just possibly—serve as the base for the profound changes needed if Russia is to become a full member of the developed and democratic world, as its size, its culture and its past achievements suggest it should? These are the questions this survey will explore, starting with the simplest and crudest gauge of success: the prospects for sustainable economic growth.