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RUSSIA: The Siberian Giant Is Waking Up

Apostolis Fotiadis

TOMSK, Siberia, Jun 5 2008 (IPS) - Ludmila Nikolovna, an ethnic Russian from Moldova, has no misgivings about her decision to come and study economics at Tomsk State University, even though she had to leave her two-month old daughter with her grandparents in Moscow.

Going back to see her child means a three-day trip one way, but she says the quality of education makes it worth it, and that her degree will secure better opportunities for both her and the child.

Thousands of students like Ludmila come every year to Tomsk, capital of Tomsk Oblast (Tomsk region) in the heart of the Western Siberia, 3,500 km east of Moscow by train, a four-hour flight. Every fifth resident in the city of around 500,000 is a student.

A centre of academic activity since the mid-19th century, Tomsk has become known in Russia as the ‘Siberian Athens’. The six universities and more than 40 research institutes here make it the third biggest academic centre in Russia after Moscow and St. Petersburg.

But academics is just one of the hidden treasures of this region. “Tomsk is often called an island of intellect in an ocean of resources,” Oleg Korneev at the department of international cooperation told IPS. “The development potential of the region created by the combination of a strong academic community and the vast natural resources is enormous, and only a tiny bit of it is actually exploited today.”

In the Oblast’s 317,000 square kilometres lie some of the most precious natural resources.

The regional government estimates oil reserves of up to 2.5 billion tonnes and gas reserves of about 1.3 trillion tonnes. The area has also the largest reserve of iron ore in the world.

Twenty-seven million cubic metres of timber can be harvested annually without disrupting the regional ecosystem. And, here too, are the richest reserves of underground fresh and thermal water in Russia.

The region holds a promising future, but people think also of the problems inherited from the past. Heavy industry has set up here at plants evacuated during the Second World War, many still using outdated technology. Basic infrastructure like the regional road network is often in very bad condition.

A large amount of Russia’s chemical and petrochemical production is in Tomsk Oblast. The local machine-building complex manufactures 20 percent of Russia’s electric motors.

Besides heavy industry, numerous companies based in the region produce hi-tech equipment for oil and gas pipelines, in great demand throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States (most of the ex-Soviet states).

Fifteen kilometres northwest of the regional capital lies Seversk, a city which hosts several nuclear reactors and plants for processing uranium and plutonium. Until recently nuclear warheads were produced and stored in the city. Seversk – a secret city until the collapse of the Soviet bloc – still remains closed to people except by special permission. Tomsk was itself a closed city to foreigners up to 1992.

These days the focus has shifted to bringing the foreigner in. “We are looking for good quality investment from abroad, currently focusing more on western Europeans, North Americans, Chinese, Japanese and Australians,” Korneev says.

Seeking to support developmental projects, the administration is planning to set up a ‘technical-innovative special economic zone’. The measure aims to boost commercialisation of innovations in the fields of information and communication technology, nanotechnology and biotechnology.

The government intends to spend more than one billion rubles (27 million euros) on this project, building support infrastructure like roads and road junctions, and a core centre including laboratories, conference halls and administration offices.

“The task is to combine innovation with industrial development, thus to bring together the merits of intelligence and natural resources,” Korneev says. “It is going to take time but imagine the impact of developing a region bigger and richer than the United Kingdom.”

But he acknowledges that there has been a downside to progress. The river ‘Tom’ which crosses the city is polluted, an example of past development policies that lacked an environmental awareness. And it is a warning that things should be done a little more carefully this time.