This is where Russia stands in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index. The neighbors are wonderful. So the well-known saying, "the Papuans will soon overtake us," has come true in the most literal sense. Time to start thinking about abandoning the Skolkovo "innovation city" idea and launching national projects like "Affordable Loincloths" or "Slash-and-Burn Agriculture." *Compared with 2009, Russia fell from 146th to 154th place out of 178 countries whose level of corruption in the state apparatus TI measures through surveys of businesspeople and experts. Russia’s absolute score dropped from 2.2 to 2.1 (the lower the number on the 0 to 10 scale, the higher the perceived level of corruption), and among major economies Russia remains the most corrupt country. *///// Interestingly, yesterday I started a corporate governance course at the Yale Center for Corporate Governance and Performance, and the professor — the formidable elderly curmudgeon of a lawyer Ira Millstein — pulled out this ranking, started waving it around, and fuming: *What the hell is happening to this country! It’s a disgrace! America has fallen to 22nd place! Our neighbors are Slovenia, Estonia, Uruguay, and Chile! Those are not the countries that should be next to us in rankings like this! *Exactly: for some, the cabbage soup is sour; for others, the pearls are too small (a Russian saying about how people complain from very different levels of hardship). And of course, let me remind you that the special Presidential Council of the Russian Federation for Combating Corruption was created by decree of V.V. Putin on November 24, 2003. Seven years of uncompromising struggle against corruption. Quite a lot has been accomplished: Timchenko became a billionaire. And Rotenberg too. The entire southern coast of France has been bought up. Bowling balls for Alina Kabaeva are being carved (using nanotechnology!) out of solid diamond. But of course there are still some shortcomings. They say that recently a deputy minister was seen on an entirely ordinary scheduled flight. He was cramped into business class and suffering terribly.