Talented Russian youth to get ‘economic lifts’ to a better future via Putin’s ASI

The main focus of the ASI, according to Putin's May presentation and July video conference, will basically be the provision of active support for representatives of talented Russian youth that have already achieved certain concrete results in the field of innovation, particularly those working in medium-sized businesses (MSBs). “We have special state structures that liaise with small businesses, and similar special state structures that work with large businesses. It is only the MSB sector that, to some extent, seems to be deprived of official attention,” Putin noted. “Therefore, the creation of the ASI is intended to correct this situation, as its main mission is to support young Russians’ innovative activities in the MSB sector.”

ASI’s goals and objectives

Briefing the Presidium of the Russian government on the ASI, its aims and objectives, and later expanding on these issues at a meeting with selected representatives of small- and middle-sized businesses, Putin, allegedly the brain behind the creation of ASI, specifically noted that the ‘government’s pet project’ is intended to play the role of so-called ‘social and economic lifts’ for gifted young Russians, whose innovative ideas will be helpful in further development of the whole country. Thus, at the meeting with business CEOs in the White House press center, Putin explained in details why and for whom the government’s new special agency has been created. The new agency, in Putin's words, will provide comprehensive support for the most advanced scientific and technological inventions that are capable of positively changing the spheres of the Russian economy. 

“I honestly hope to see the Agency of Strategic Initiatives as an effective tool for those, who are full of energy and desire to realize their projects, both for themselves, their private businesses and for our country as a whole.”

The ASI will be fully owned by the Russian government, and it will operate under the Federal Cabinet of Ministers and directly report to the prime minister. “The ASI’s main collegiate decision-making organ will be the Supervisory Council, which, if there are no objections, will be headed by your ‘humble servant’,” said Putin during his presentation of the project. “It seems to me that such a direct control will be very effective, and my help, I hope, will be productive. The council will include representatives of business circles and leaders of key business associations in the country.”

The concept of the agency's activities, according to Putin, will be based on four ‘pillars’ - transparency, minimum of bureaucracy, maximum reliance on independent experts and impartiality in employment of personnel and in selection of applicants’ projects for support. The ASI will operate in three key directions, promoting significant, interesting and perspective projects as well as the inventors and innovators, who have achieved outstanding results in their fields. Specifically, the agency will develop a complex system of evaluating professional qualifications that will enable the government to update the standards of education, further training and re-training of workers. It will also promote breakthrough innovative projects in the spheres of education, medicine and culture.

The first direction of the ASI’s operations is so-called New Business, where the main focus will be on promotion and realization of significant perspective breakthrough projects in all spheres of human activity in the country. The second direction of the ASI is called Young Professionals in their Businesses, where the key emphasis will be placed on improvement of qualifications, retraining and modernization of employees’ existing skills. The entire amount of work to be in this direction, according to the ASI creation strategists, can be characterized as ‘the formation of the necessary human recourses for innovations’ in Russia. The third direction of the ASI is the realization of so-called Social Programs that envisage the provision of active aid to the older generation, children and people with disabilities, as well as providing support for medicine, culture and recreation facilities.

The project authorship reflects competition between Kremlin and White House

There are data indicating that the establishment of the ASI is the first step toward the creation of the Russian analog of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the globally famed innovative organ of the Pentagon that is responsible for the development of new breakthrough and advanced technologies both for the U.S. Armed Forces as well for non-defense-related sectors of the country's economy. In this regard, the ASI is projected to have not only executive powers in the field of innovative projects, but also the so-called ‘supra-ministerial’ functions.

Specifically, such powers, in practice, envisage giving the ASI role of coordinating the efforts of deputy ministers from ministries, which are responsible for innovative projects. Prime Minister's Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov hinted on this privileged status of the ASI, when he said that both the management and employees will have direct accesses and regular meetings with the prime minister and other top government officials to solve issues and problems that might emerge in the course of their operations.

It needs to be noted that Putin first spoke of the initiative to create the ASI at a United Russia party conference in Volgograd in May, when he highlighted the three main directions of the agency’s operations that are intended to maximally and effectively help entrepreneurs to run their businesses, reduce bureaucratic barriers and redundant red tape gridlocks for people chartering new companies or entering new markets, create more flexible and effective industrial regulation of companies' activities in particular, and the national economy in general, thus giving them an innovative orientation.

However, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev can also be considered the author or the brain behind the formation of the ASI. This stems from the fact that the idea of creating a modern center for new innovations and developments in the field of high technology promotion was first announced by Medvedev in his Annual State of the Nation in November 2009, in which he called for “the completion of processing the proposals and recommendations for the creation of a new powerful research center that focus on supporting all the priority innovative projects and developments in the country.” According to the president's plan, such center will accommodate facilities for development and commercialization of new technologies as well as subsidiary offices and laboratories of leading Russian and foreign universities and companies. This led to the creation of the center for innovations in the Moscow suburban town of Skolkovo, hence the name of project, Skolkovo Innovation Center.

It is this innovative component of the ASI activities that has generated heated debates, because in this context, it is certain that the ASI will cross the way of the president's famous innovation center of Skolkovo. This has given experts another reason to assert that there is a constant competition between the Kremlin and the White House, as the president’s and prime minister's teams frequently usurp each other's agendas, as they try to outdo one another, sometimes even stepping on each other's heels in the process. 

As examples, they cited the ASI and Skolkovo projects, as well as Medvedev's Golden 100 Personnel Reserve and Putin’s similar program. Besides, Putin has a network of reception offices for the chairman of the United Russia party across Russia, while Medvedev has also recently opened receptions of the Russian president, in addition to the existing institution of Presidential Plenipotentiary Representatives in Russia’s seven federal districts. Some Russian White House officials see the ASI as an executive structure of the State High Technologies Commission, answerable to the prime minister, a mirror-image analog of the Presidential High Technologies Commission, which is headed by Medvedev, etc.  These are just few examples of the manifestations of the ongoing competition between Kremlin and the White House, but they do show the scope of the disastrous duplication of official functions and powers in the upper corridors of state governance in Russia. 

But Putin himself and other high representatives of the Russian White House have declared that the new state agency will not step on the heels of Skolkovo, nor will it interfere with free competition. “I consider Skolkovo to be a good project, a modern, appropriate undertaking, aiming to concentrate interesting people and important projects on a single well-equipped platform,” Putin said. “But regarding the ASI, we are talking totally about a different direction, aimed at creating a special network of activities across the country,” he noted. “In this context, the ASI and Skolkovo will harmoniously complement each other. Besides, nobody plans to step on anyone’s body parts and there is not even any thought of that.”  

Commenting on the ASI creation, Russian Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina noted that this step will secure more effective solutions, among other projects, to the problems of modernization of the Russian economy and society in general. “This initiative is very useful in terms of promoting new projects. It seems to me that all these initiatives and projects being executed today — the State Commission on Modernization and Skolkovo Innovation Project — are all directed at solving similar tasks. We have set for us the goal of modernizing the economy and putting the whole society on a new innovative way of development. In other words, all these projects are dedicated to facilitating successful achievement of the goals.”

Narine Adamova took part in proofing of this text.