but in russia, dmitry medvedev, who was the deputy prime minister, was also the chairman of gas perlman. so state and policy and fortunes all linked up together. by the way, with a fair amount of political violence too. now that mr. putin has decided that he is the once and future president of russia, i think the chances that russia is going to break out of that and build on other strengths that it might have, including a very smart population, those have receded. i think unfortunately, russia will not find greater strength in the international economy. it's pretty much an economy that's dependent on the price of oil to do well. >> let me go back to the arab spring. what do you think the lessons are? >> the lesson of the arab spring is authoritarianism is not stable. it's simply not stable. if men, women and children don't have a way to change their circumstances, and change their government peacefully, they will do it violently. when we were in romania, we learned of something that i now called the ceausescu moment. nikolai was the dictator of romanian and with situations going on in h