THE VILLAGE of Skolkovo and its surrounding area to the west of Moscow is where Russia’s president Dmitriy Medvedev hopes to develop Russia’s version of California’s Silicon Valley.
The Skolkovo Innovation Centre has been given generous exemptions from the restrictive bureaucracy that has hindered economic development in other parts of Russia.
Under the direction of oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, the innovation city, or Innograd as it has become known in Russian, will have a different and more liberal tax regime than the rest of the country; will have its own police force; and will be run not by a mayor but by a foundation.
Vekselberg, a Ukrainian-born mining and oil billionaire, has been ranked as the 16th wealthiest man in Russia with a personal fortune of $6.4 billion.
He has been responsible for the return of art works to Russia from abroad and is believed to own the world’s largest collection of Fabergé eggs. He has appealed against a $38 million fine imposed on him by the Swiss authorities who investigated his investment in the electronics company Oerlikon and alleged he concealed information.
The Skolkovo Foundation hopes to attract foreign information technology companies as well as their Russian counterparts to the centre as part of a plan to decrease the Russian economy’s dependence on oil, gas and other natural resources which now constitute almost 80 per cent of the country’s export earnings.
A number of US organisations, including Cisco Systems – a big multinational technology firm based in San José, California, and employing more than 70,000 people worldwide – have agreed to support the plan, as has the top-ranking educational institution the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
German company Siemens has pledged to begin medical projects at the end of this year, and the Finnish telecommunications company Nokia is another foreign organisation that has promised to become involved.
Microsoft’s chief executive officer Steve Ballmer has agreed to establish a research and development project at the centre.
On the Russian side, oil giant Lukoil has promised to base its research and development work in the centre in three years’ time.
Although ordinary Russians have become cynical about possible corruption at high levels in society and are extremely critical of the Skolkovo project, visitors from abroad and particularly from the United States, including former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who visited Skolkovo last autumn, have spoken optimistically of the project. The project is divided into sections, with the Moscow Management School providing business education, including an executive MBA. The first 45 students began their education there in 2009. Tuition fees run as high as $115,000 per annum.
There is also a publishing house, set up three years ago, which issues works by leading business experts translated into Russian as well as works by Russian experts in English.