In 1991, Vladimir Yakunin, a Soviet diplomat and KGB officer, returned from his posting in New York to a country that no longer existed. The state that he had served for all his adult life had been dissolved, the values he knew abandoned. Millions of his compatriots suffered as their savings disappeared and their previously secure existences were threatened by an unholy combination of criminality, corruption and chaos. Others thrived amid the opportunities offered in the new polity, and a battle began over the direction the fledgling state should take. While something resembling stability was won in the early 2000s, today Russia's future remains unresolved; its governing class divided. The Treacherous Path is Yakunin's account of his own experiences on the front line of Russia's implosion and eventual resurgence, and of a career - as an intelligence officer, a government minister and for ten years the CEO of Russia's largest company - that has taken him from the furthest corners of this incomprehensibly vast and complex nation to the Kremlin's corridors. Tackling topics as diverse as terrorism, government intrigue and the reality of doing business in Russia, and offering unparalleled insights into the post-Soviet mindset, this is the first time that a figure with Yakunin's background has talked so openly and frankly about his country.

Humankind has always striven to catch a glimpse of the future. Egyptian priests, Babylonian astrologers, Greek oracles and medieval magicians stared at the sky and tried to foresee the coming catastrophes, relying on certain distributions of the stars. Contemporary fantasists construct models of the future through the pages of their novels and astonish readers with unbelievable pictures of a technocratic society where the very human personality has transformed under the influence of technological advance. However, most of all the previous attempts to foresee the future has remained in the framework of banal superstition or ordinary creative writing. At the same time, the principal question does not cease to be of current interest. Is scientific forecasting of the near and distant future possible? The authors of this book are convinced that it is. On the basis of rigorous methodology, mathematicians, physicians, philosophers and historians demonstrate how the world will look in coming decades and centuries and try to find out if the future can be determined. Along with general philosophical analysis, mathematical modeling is used in order to give the reader a clear and objective vision of the future. The book will be useful for everyone who takes care of his own destiny and the destiny of the next generations.