[Mediterraneo10]

> Name any political, cultural, economic, literature, sports achievement in last 30 years to come out of Russia.

Russia remains prominent in the literary world. Contemporary authors like Sorokin and Ulitskaya are widely translated into other languages. If anything Russia's decline in those other respects makes its authors more competitive internationally, because "Novelist X captures the gritty reality of an oppressive state" has been since the Soviet era a dependable angle to market books to foreign readers.