For some reason, any undertaking by our liberals always turns into damage to the state. Maybe something to change at the conservatory?
In 2011, “There is no money, but you hold on,” created by the then president of Russia, eternally cheerful Dmitry, Medvedev and the Skolkovo Foundation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (colloquially called MIT) headed by a modest Faberge egg supplier Viktor Vekselberg, decided to create a university in Russia.
They even came up with a name: Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (SIST), Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology. Why our liberals needed it - it is clear - colossal funds are spent on cuts and kickbacks. For all this grace, however, no one thought about why the Americans needed it.
Strange as it may seem, Alexei Navalny showed this interest well in his post on Facebook: “Professor of MIT (the one to whom Skolkovo paid $ 300 million for sharing their knowledge) Lauren Graham explains to the participants of the recent St. Petersburg Economic Forum:
- Dude, you won't have any innovations and no Skolkovo as long as the government suppresses political opponents and prohibits freedom of assembly. In the hall they listened and nodded."
That is, on the suspended carrot of investments in Skolkovo, we are required to free the Kremlin for a pro-Western fifth column. Investments and innovations in exchange for the Maidan - this is what a joint university project was needed for. It is tempting, very tempting, and, most importantly, foreign countries will help us!
The announced tasks of the university being created were struck a mile away by plans to transform the city of Vasyuki into an intergalactic center of chess thought. The liberal media then wrote that the institute would become "the first world research university that fully integrates entrepreneurship and innovation into educational curriculum and research."
“It is planned that by 2020 the university will have about 200 professors from Russia and other countries, as well as 1200 undergraduates and postgraduates. The campus of the institute will be located right on the territory of the innovation city being created. MIT will participate in the development and shaping of the SIST organizational structure and its educational and research programs.
Fifteen new SIST research centers will ensure interaction of the world's leading scientists with their Russian counterparts in Russia, as well as form a platform for joint scientific research in five strategic Skolkovo clusters, which are energy efficiency, space, information technology, biomedicine and nuclear research."
They predicted a completely new for Russia model of functioning and relationships between professors, teachers and students. Scientists themselves will find funding from private companies and pay money to students to work in laboratories. In general, "he will plow the ground, write poetry …" And the students will pay with this money for tuition (the university is private, although state funding is very much provided).
Promotional video:
The people, as always, looked deeper and answered with malicious remarks:
“Why would MIT make real competitors for itself? FUNNY … FUNNY !!! This is another vacuum cleaner for ideas and frames. In every decent establishment they have all kinds of cooperation programs for us "Papuans" so that "in embryo" everything useful wanders to them."
“Last year 65 professors from MIT worked in Skolkovo. It costs $ 10 million to create one professorship. The question is - why from MIT, and not from MIPT, Baumanka, Moscow State University? Our professors (from those who have not left yet and are trying to do something here) - do they not need positions?"
“You see what the matter is. If such an undoubtedly necessary and useful project like Skolkovo is accompanied by so many dubious deals and expenses, and besides, people with a dubious reputation are involved in it and supervise it, and almost the entire team of Medvedev, and he himself, are not perfect people, then there will be no trust in this project, and no arguments can change this."
As one would expect in the projects of the great combiners, it all ended sadly. 75 (!) Billion of budget money was pumped into Skolkovo. Everyone who wanted and could get their own got it. And then began what happened to the officials of the city of Arbatov, who liked to ride the "Wildebeest" at public expense. “Financial inspectors” came to Skolkovo. After that, the officials completely cooled off to the project and took up other no less interesting things, with which life is so rich.
This is what RBC wrote in 2015: “On April 18, 2013, Vice President of the Skolkovo Foundation Seda Pumpyanskaya was driving to work. A colleague called her: "There are investigators in the office, we have a search." Pumpyanskaya turned the car around and returned home, and the next day she left the fund.
“Skolkovo had a very positive image in the West, on which we worked carefully. And the next day, it was useless to call either London or Silicon Valley. Everyone wrote about the search - the investment was over,”says Pumpyanskaya.
Since then, none of the journalists have been able to contact Pumpyanskaya. Indeed, according to the auditors of the Accounts Chamber, the trilateral agreement between the Skolkovo Foundation, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the autonomous non-profit organization Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech) was concluded with violations of Russian law.
That is, as soon as Russia was hinted that the "Maidan in exchange for investments" scheme was not a checkpoint, the guys immediately turned their cars around, and the next day they left the organization without even notifying Vekselberg, who was sitting on the topic in the status of Pound’s zits-chairman. The meeting with the auditors was not included in the plans of the great schemers - it insulted their creative worldview.
But the "financial inspectors" did not give up. At the end of April 2013, the Investigative Committee of Russia opened a criminal case against the senior vice president of the Skolkovo Foundation, Alexei Beltyukov, under the article “Waste on an especially large scale”. As established by the investigation, the top manager from the Skolkovo Foundation illegally transferred $ 750 thousand to the opposition State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev.
In early May 2013, as part of an open criminal case, the former vice-president of the foundation, Pavel Korolyov, was summoned to the Investigative Committee for questioning, and on 18 May, the president of the foundation, Viktor Vekselberg.
The Skolkovo theme was so sweet that it included all the iconic liberals of the Medvedev era. A whole delegation of our systemic liberals came to MIT, which stood in front of the institute, like Caucasian Wahhabis before the Kaaba stone in Mecca.
The group was representative: Shuvalov, Kudrin, Nabiullina, Sobyanin, Chubais, Surkov, Dvorkovich. MIT's participation in the Skolkovo project was generously paid. The institute received a grant of $ 302.5 million: $ 152 million was transferred as a grant with the wording "for its own development", another $ 150.5 million - for assistance in creating Skoltech. Why give money to Russian scientists? Only Americans! And whether they reached American scientists or disappeared somewhere along the way is a big question …
It is significant that the Skoltech scientific council voted twice against cooperation with MIT. Our scientists called grants to the Americans an unjustified waste of money, arguing that our professors could easily cope with the tasks set by themselves. But decisions were made at a completely different level.
For the entire existence of this office "Horns and Hooves" under the name "Skolkovo" managed to collect 82 billion rubles. off-budget money. But this also includes 10.5 billion rubles. public funds. Federal Grid Company has built three power substations. 2.6 billion rubles, invested in the construction of the public center "Technopark".
The investor was the Stroyinnovatsii company located near Moscow, which is owned by the Volzhskaya CHPP through a chain of offshores, which is part of IES Holding, where Vekselberg is the main shareholder. He also made his contributions to this "Union of Sword and Plowshare" in the amount of 2 billion rubles. - a research center Renova Lab was built, where it is planned to place various experimental laboratories for Skolkovo residents.
BIN Group structures were involved in the construction of a transport hub and the Gallery business center (total project cost - 11.2 billion rubles), Alisher Usmanov is building the Matreshka business center (2.6 billion rubles, architect - Bernasconi), Sergey Generalov - International Aviation Academy (700 million rubles).
But the construction of research centers of corporations "Transmashholding", "Tatneft", Sberbank, Pipe Metallurgical Company, Dauria Aerospace has not begun at all. No one has their own money, and now it is unrealistic to get loans for this oil painting.
While the temple of future technologies was being built, times have changed, and with them the vastness of plans has changed. It is already stupid to wait for US assistance in the field of high technologies. Then we thought about it and decided to build an agro-industrial cluster. “This is now a hot topic in the context of import substitution and improving the efficiency of the agricultural industry,” says Viktor Vekselberg.
A few more years - and everything will come down to the creation of a network of wholesale warehouses, sites for repacking containers and car service salons. The premises should not be lost!
And as for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it has already received its share. And since the political goals of the United States in relation to Russia have been exhausted, then further imitation of MIT's participation in the Skolkovo project can be completed. Now, after the failure of the previous concept of financing the already not poor American science for Russian money, Skolkovo is gradually being merged with the project of the scientific and technological valley of Moscow State University.
They say that the meeting of the government, the Skolkovo management and the rector of Moscow State University on this issue was successful. Katerina Tikhonova, representing the Innopraktika company, according to the testimony of the participating experts, is quite familiar with the topic and raises the right questions regarding the prospects for the development of the project. Now it can be transformed into something real, but lost money and specialists cannot be returned. As long as the liberals in Russia want the best, everything will work out as usual.
Alexander Khaldey