As somebody born in former USSR, this is why Russia will _never_ have a Silicon Valley. I refuse to ever consider living in (even temporarily), visiting or doing business either in Russia or with a Russian company in the United States (how do I know they won't come after my relatives?). When I got to the United States, I realized that I'd rather sweep the streets in the United States than be wealthy in Russia.

Rule of law (vs. rule by decree), freedom are deeply engrained in American and ersatz-British (UK, but also Canada, Australia, Ireland, etc...) ethos. A pupil on a school yard, when confronted by a teacher screams "it's a free country, you can't make me". People feel entitled (I am using it in a dictionary definition, in the positive sense of the word) to freedom, to human rights.

This isn't the same way in Russia: elders would frequently tell me "the place for people who want freedom is in jail". Philosophy was taught in an entirely different way in university: my parents were surprised when I told them that Plato and Hegel (who taught that real freedom is the right to submit to an absolutist state) were considered fascist by my (American) professors. Their anti-democratic (in the greater sense of the word, which encompasses not just elections but also concepts of minority rights, free speech and the like), anti-freedom theories were taught as being more "advanced" than philosophies of Locke and Kant.

To be fair, there are many abhorrent and brutal ideas in the American ethos as well, but they're token compared to the Russian/Soviet ethos: compare for example, Russian behaviour in Chechnya with US behaviour in Iraq or Israeli behaviour in Palestine. As another example, it's shameful that United States is even publicly debating torture, but in Russia torture isn't an abstract debate about "ticking time-bombs": it's something that you _expect_ to happen to you if you're arrested. I remember a neighbour recounting how, when he was found publicly drunk, the police patrol put him on the trunk of the car and struck his liver and kidneys with a truncheon to teach him a "lesson".

United States, Canada and England are blessed, historically. Russia had been occupied by Mongols, ruled by tyrannical czars (who styled themselves after Mongol Khans and Byzantine Emperors), ruled by the worst tyrant known to man (with an intercession of Nazi Germany rule, during which heavy racist propaganda was further imprinted into the popular ethos). You can't expect this backdrop to produce an environment in which the next Google will be built (there's a reason Sergey Brin didn't stay in Russia to build it!).