Anatoly Chubais, the mastermind of Russia’s first privatization program, is now leading a charge by Vladimir Putin to emulate Silicon Valley’s success by investing in high-tech firms, many of them American.
Chubais, who helped organize the state-asset sales in the first post-Soviet decade that created Russia’s oligarchs while most citizens sank into poverty, is buying up stakes in research-and-development companies in Europe, China, Israel and especially the U.S. as chief executive officer of Moscow-based OAO Rusnano, the former state-funded Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies.
