A number of supposedly cash-strapped oligarchs have also jumped on the modernization bandwagon. No sooner had the government announced plans to stimulate modernization than the business community came forward with numerous projects in need of government funding.

By a strange coincidence, however, it was discovered that almost all of the projects were begun some time ago. In other words, under the pretext of wanting to help modernize the country, corporations are simply shifting some of their own expenses to taxpayers. As a result, the same projects that would have been realized without any call to modernization will now be carried out with Russian taxpayers footing a large part of the bill.

The same thing is happening with the state-mandated shift from outdated incandescent light bulbs to the new and far more expensive LED energy-efficient bulbs. Plans call for consumers to pay for the difference in price. Liberal commentators are upset, saying consumers should be left to choose for themselves which bulbs they prefer. But the same commentators admit that most Russians will not commit a significant portion of their limited incomes to buying the more costly bulbs, thereby leaving the government’s grand plans for saving energy unfulfilled. But the authorities and their liberal critics have failed to consider the possibility of giving one-time state subsidies not to businesses but to private consumers who buy the new bulbs — perhaps because that option runs counter to typical free-market thinking. And yet doling out huge state subsidies to private businesses does not strike anybody as being anti-market. In fact, the authorities and liberals are in such agreement on this issue that it is almost touching.

Meanwhile, the state is bestowing lucrative contracts on the oligarchs in the same way that kings granted estates to princes and counts during feudal times. Onexim Group owner Mikhail Prokhorov has been given the privilege of producing the new LED bulbs, and aluminum magnate Viktor Vekselberg will head the Innovation City project. It remains to be seen whether these projects will succeed, but it is clear from the outset that both of these multibillionaires will become ever richer in the process.

It has not even occurred to government officials that simply repeating the modernization strategy employed by the United States in the 1970s is far from the best way to meet the challenges facing Russia in the 21st century. What’s more, the Soviet Union already built various “science cities” such as Zelenograd near Moscow and Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk.

They served their purpose at the time, but they were ruthlessly gutted during the liberal reforms of the 1990s. It is too late to restore those structures, and trying to build a new one is simply dumb. The Defense Ministry might as well build stone fortresses along Russia’s borders on the logic that they were effective in medieval wars.

The time for a Silicon Valley has passed — along with Beatles songs and the first bulky IBM computers. If a great number of talented people continue living in California’s Silicon Valley, it is not because the U.S. government enticed them there as part of its drive to build an “innovative economy” but because those people have connections there, the climate is good, and they enjoy comfortable living conditions.

In fact, Russia’s leadership might do well to set the objective of creating favorable living conditions for the people. Unfortunately, officials consider that particular goal to be petty and unworthy of serious discussion. And that is precisely why all of the authorities’ attempts at modernization invariably come off as a bad joke.

What’s needed is not a Russian Silicon Valley but repairs to thousands of rural roads and improvements to provincial schools and hospitals. These are the top priorities for modernization, and discussing anything else is simply pointless.

**Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.