As the world financial crisis buffets country after country, Russia has been caught out because of its unhealthy overdependence on oil, gas and metals, which account for more than three-quarters of export earnings. The collapse in energy and commodity prices since this summer is exposing the country’s fragility: Russia’s boom, it turns out, was built on expensive oil,and precious little else. For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the threat of large-scale unemployment looms.This all amounts to the first serious test of « Putinomics » – the domestic policies put in place by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during the two terms of his presidency from 2000 to 2008. If you want to take the pulse of Russia, as its economic progress of the past few years comes to a sudden and wrenching stop, leave behind Moscow and drive 354 km southwest to the small Russian town of Lyudinovo.There everything slows down.

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