At the turn of the 20th century, Novosibirsk, the third largest city in Russia, burst into being like a meteor. It was little more than a large village in 1897. The original town was to be near the projected new Trans-Siberian rail hub with an additional connection to the north-south Turkestan-Siberia Railway.
Novosibirsk became one of the first places across Russia to institute compulsory primary education. With the Bolshevik Revolution underway, the Red Army took the city in 1921. Twenty-three years later, Novosibirsk had a population of nearly 300,000. By 1962, despite WWII, Novosibirsk had reached one million citizens. At that time it was the youngest city in the world with over a million people. Today over 1.5 million citizens reside in this capital city. Being so far away from Moscow, there has always been a strong entrepreneurial base within the population.
Nonna Barkhatova, CCI’s Director for many years, is second from the right in the photo below. Nonna got her business degrees in England in the 90s. She returned home and created a dynamic business center to facilitate the development of regional entrepreneurism. Soon she learned about CCI and began lobbying to be part of our network of Russian cities from which we identified Russia’s young entrepreneurs who were struggling to create their first businesses. Nonna was persistent, sending us stories of her struggling business developers. Within a year we decided to partner with her business center. Nonna organized CCI’s September 2018 visit to her city. [Continue Reading]
