They are in the early days of raising a multibillion-dollar bastion in a struggle to liberate an economy partly shackled by remnants of Soviet-era state control, corruption and a dependence on exported oil and natural resources.
It’s called Skolkovo City, a bold effort by Russia’s government to modernize the economy by attracting some of the world’s brightest scientific minds and most inventive high-tech firms to a 21st-century centre of excellence.
President Dmitry Medvedev has invested considerable political capital in the project, which will either be the most visionary enterprise in post-communist Russia or one of the most spectacular busts since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Russia is littered with dozens of dilapidated, Soviet-era “science cities,” known as naukograds, many of which were off-limits to outsiders and often built with forced labour from political prisons. They are rusting reminders that the Kremlin has a poor record when it comes to building a modern economy around science and technology.
