Which road leads to Innograd?
The collapse of the Skolkovo Innograd
News for Dmitry Medvedev from political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky
Slon.ru The other day, speaking at a joint meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Skolkovo Foundation and the Presidential Commission for Modernization, Dmitry Medvedev complained that the project of the "Russian Silicon Valley" is somehow not too popular yet.
Even in Russia, only 15% of citizens firmly know why the Skolkovo innograd is needed at all and what it does.
And that figure, in my opinion, is overstated. It's just that some of the respondents are delicate people and are afraid to offend the president with the only honest confession: fuck knows, Your Excellency, why is it necessary…
"Such figures cannot be considered satisfactory," said a disgruntled Medvedev. – Skolkovo is not a backstage, but a public project. Our citizens should be fully aware of what initiatives are being implemented within the Center, how they are funded, what has already been done, what is supposed to be done next, all information and its sources should be as reliable and accessible as possible." It is important to promote the Skolkovo innograd so that it becomes a "shooting brand," the president decided.
Well, we have such experience. It is enough to recall the shooting brand "Kalashnikov assault rifle", which was promoted to such an extent that it got on the coats of arms of four states. However, the machine was particularly attractive for its ease of handling and memorable silhouette. Skolkovo has some problems with both the first and the second. But still, the president is not fully right and fair. For a year and a half of its conditional early existence, Innograd managed to be remembered for several bright events/phenomena at once.
For example, by involving the famous either intelligence officer, or investment banker Anna Chapman in cooperation. Ms. Chapman became the first of the famous innovators who decided to dig in Skolkovo in order, according to her own version, to engage in some developments in the field of 3D technologies.
Another is the personnel scandal with the appointment to the post of CEO and the immediate dismissal from the same post of a prominent manager Mikhail Moshiashvili, who had managerial experience in many iconic corporations of our time – from Yukos to Ilim Pulp. According to the semi-official version, Moshiashvili was kicked out before he could take it, because the first deputy head of the Kremlin administration Vladislav Surkov, who remembered him too much from working together in the structures of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, harshly opposed his candidacy. According to the unofficial version, Moshiashvili, having barely taken office, began to demand $200 million from a well–known international corporation for "the right to work in Skolkovo." The corporation, don't be a fool, was able to complain personally to Medvedev: and so we climb into your shit for no reason, and then there's extortion, you know. So…
The road has become a special symbol of the Skolkovo Innograd. The same Russian road, the metaphysical correlate of the sacred fool. The section of the Skolkovo highway to Innograd with a length of 6 km was repaired for 6 billion rubles (billion rubles per kilometer). And immediately fell apart, exposing the quality of the repair. It is still – or already – very difficult to drive on it. In this difficult situation, the Skolkovo Foundation appealed to the government of the Russian Federation with a request to connect the innograd being created to the electric networks for free, in order to save the same 6 billion rubles from the Skolkovo budget in this way. Rationale: it's not good that such an important presidential facility has to pay for all sorts of nonsense. Especially after a road wreck. The Federal Grid Company (FGC) came out sharply against it, the government hung in tense thought.
There really is something to think about, especially considering that it has recently become clear that a significant part of the land allocated for innograd is the territory of the former Matveevsky state farm, which in 2003-2004 was stolen from 851 private landowners and resold by a certain CJSC Matveevskoye. Apparently, compensation payments are coming, which no one prefers to talk about yet. Nothing else is really known about Innograd's activities.
But we managed to find out something new about the public face of our "Silicon Valley", the head of the Skolkovo Foundation, Viktor Vekselberg. As soon as he headed the presidential modernization project, he immediately began to have serious tax problems in Switzerland. Ended with a rapid move from the canton of Zurich to the semi-offshore canton of Zug. Apparently, in order to say the last "sorry" to the merciless Zurich and not to spoil the relationship completely, Vekselberg decided to buy a license for the Skolkovo technopark of the University of Zurich (the issue price is about CHF 500,000). It is unclear why we need the Zurich Technopark, but some Swiss professors are probably pleased.
And in February 2011, Vekselberg again became the hero of a scandal, formally unrelated to the cherished innograd. The story of the resale of the building of the former Hungarian trade mission in the Russian Federation became public: in 2008, Diamond Air, an offshore company affiliated with the future head of Skolkovo, acquired this building from Hungarians for an amount slightly exceeding $20 million, and six months later resold it to the Russian state in the person of the Ministry of Regional Development of the Russian Federation (Minister – Viktor Basargin) already for a little over $140 million. The profit from the operation was 800%. It is clear that such an effective operation could become only with the certain interested participation of major Russian officials representing the buyer's side.
In principle, nothing new, the scheme is absolutely typical for Russian "effective management". Everything would be fine if the architect of the scheme did not pretend to be the responsible executor of the Russian Federation-modernization, and at the same time would not be (as the good innovative languages say) a US citizen. Where such an operation in its pure form falls under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). That is, the head of the Skolkovo innograd may face an American prison or, at least, the prospect of not being able to enter the country where the original Silicon Valley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and many other samples/partners of Russian modernization are located.
It is probably no coincidence that this spring a certain "Sakharov Movement", founded out of the blue by several second- and fourth-year students of the journalism faculty of Moscow State University and the Faculty of International Journalism of MGIMO, suddenly launched a public campaign to assign the main square of the Skolkovo innograd after the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, three-time Hero of Socialist Labor academician Andrei Sakharov. Apparently, the attempt to use the brand "Andrei Sakharov" completely free of charge is the last chance to save the reputation of Medvedev's favorite project. It is rather strange that the keepers of the academician's name and memory have not yet reacted to this attempt. They say, however, that Elena Georgievna Bonner is ill now and she is not up to it... God grant her health.
Of course, if we talk seriously about the main square of the non-existent innograd, then the idea immediately comes to call it after O. I. Bender. Although, as for me, this figure looks too large for the Skolkovo project. Why spend a popularly beloved brand on a scam that Ostap Ibrahimovich would simply disdain? It is enough, for example, the name of Alexander Balaganov. Remember this one? – he knew exactly how much he needed to be happy. And the suffering six-kilometer stretch of the Skolkovo highway, leading directly to the innovative paradise, should be called A. K. Kozlevich Avenue. At the same time, we would take another step towards historical reconciliation with Poland. What follows from this? Only one thing: the Skolkovo innograd is a dead–end project, doomed to collapse.
No, it's not that, as is customary in the modern Russian Federation, the project is led by "effective managers", for whom the correct organization of financial flows is important, and not the material result. And not even because the bottleneck, encased in the shell of Moscow traffic jams, but quite open to the smoke of forest fires, is not the best territory for the life and creativity of brilliant international brains.
And not even because presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich's dream of the best restaurants and concert halls cannot come true soon: decades of consistent, difficult, painstaking work are needed. For example, in order for the same restaurant to become really good by world standards, it is necessary that a stable population of people who distinguish good food from pretentious shit appear in its vicinity. Judging by the temples of the Moscow (another term would not be quite appropriate here) cuisine such as "Turandot" or "Near East", we still have to grow and grow such a population.
No. These are all small problems. And there are big problems. There are only two of them. The first problem. In the world of post-industrial consciousness, where the Internet dominates, where a completely new communication environment unknown to industrial society has been formed, localization of minds /talents in one specific physical and geographical location is simply not necessary. It was in industrial times that a person was tied to his workplace, his factory, which had an unambiguous postal address. Today, the co-authors of a startup may live on different continents and not even be familiar with each other "in real life". Why do they need some remote "Skolkovo"? The innograd of Medvedev-Vekselberg is an attempt to innovatize the first half of the XXI century according to the standards of the 60s–70s of the last century.
The second problem. In order for an innovative breakthrough to take place in any country, in any society, a cult of intelligence and knowledge is needed. Do you remember Soviet innovatization? All sorts of "I'm going to a thunderstorm" and "something physics is in high esteem, something lyrics in the pen" did not appear by chance. In today's Russia, there is a regime of monetocracy – the power of money. Where the one who is richer is definitely smarter. And intelligence is as impersonal a commodity as, say, a bottle of wine. According to the principles and rules of this system, intelligence does not need to be cultivated, especially not to kneel in front of it, ugh. Intelligence, like knowledge, is freely acquired on the market. There is a normal price – there is a deal. No– no.
In such conditions, no concentration of real scientists and innovators capable of making/inventing something new is possible. There is no incentive to concentrate.
Here is such news for President Medvedev. Hopefully, as an Internet person, he will recognize and understand them soon enough. Before the Skolkovo innograd turns from a dusty corner of the Moscow Region into just a bad joke.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru29.04.2011