NPR

In Russia's Siberian Silicon Valley, Business Is Good But Risks Can Be High

The Soviet Union built research institutes in Siberia as innovation centers during the Cold War. Since then, there's been a brain drain. Tech innovators remain, but some have faced legal challenges.
Academpark is the technology park in Akademgorodok, a Siberian suburb that's Russia's answer to Silicon Valley.

Residents in a suburb of Siberia's capital, Novosibirsk, like to say the world's smartest street runs through their leafy community.

The broad avenue that cuts through the taiga, or Siberian woodland, is named after Mikhail Lavrentyev, a mathematician who established the Soviet Union's version of Silicon Valley here during the Cold War.

To keep up with the Americans, the Kremlin built Akademgorodok – literally "academic town" – 2,000 miles east of Moscow, far from

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