And then the bottom dropped out.

When the Soviet state collapsed in 1991, the scientific apparatus crumbled along with it. The salaries and status allotted to scientists vanished, as did a system geared toward nourishing young talent. (来源：英语学习门户网站EnglishCN.com)

A walk through the Novosibirsk Institute of Automation and Electrometry is all it takes to see the years of neglect. Electrical wires hang from the ceiling like stray hairs across a tired forehead. Paint flakes from the walls; lights in the passageways flicker from dim to dark. For an institution that once sparred with MIT, this place could use a pick-me-up.

Revival

But when Mikhail Lavrentyev, a Siberian mathematician of lofty provenance, opens the door to a research lab, he reveals what is saving Akademgorodok from sliding into irreversible institutional decrepitude: two doctoral students hunched over computer terminals writing code for Intel.

Lavrentyev's grandfather, also Mikhail, was the prime mover in creating Akademgorodok. It was while working in the closed nuclear research town of Sarov that the elder Lavrentyev came upon the idea of creating an entirely new science town. It has been his grandson's fortune to oversee Akademgorodok's repurposing.

"Akademgorodok was a new idea, multidisciplinary, to give young scientists a real chance to develop ideas," Lavrentyev says. "But salaries in the '90s went south, and it became a problem for the academy. There became a clear choice when you finished your degree. Go to science, or go to business and immediately you have a reasonable salary."

So began the great hustle, as the pure scientists of Akademgorosoftly dok had to find a way to survive, commodifying and commercializing the high-tech expertise that once served the state. Many young scientists gravitated toward IT. Every year, Russia graduates as many scientific and technology specialists as India - 200,000 - although Russia is 80 percent smaller by population.

Russia's software exports now exceed $1.8 billion annually, and the country is the third-largest software outsourcing destination in the world, after China and India. "In these other countries, there was no technological culture like we had in Soviet times," says Dmitry Milovantsev, Russia's deputy minister of information technology and communication, hinting at the country's potential.

A company called Novosoft launched Novosibirsk's IT wave in 1992, growing to 500 employees and eventually partnering with IBM. Novosoft splintered in the Internet bubble, the effects of which registered even in Siberia, although the firm maintains a significant presence. Other companies have made considerable strides since then, most notably SW Soft, an IT infrastructure company specializing in server software. Today, SW Soft has more than 10,000 international customers and has received funding from Insight Venture Partners and Intel Capital.

Large multinationals are also taking advantage of the changing climate. Intel opened an Akademgorodok office in 2004 and now employs 200 programmers who optimize microprocessors. IBM arrived first to the market in 2000, while Schlumberger has taken the lead in local investment, having purchased a plot of land on which it is building an R&D lab.

The low cost of rent, services, and salaries - roughly one-fifth of Western prices - appeals, but so does the manner in which the system molds its wards. "None of our programmers in Novosibirsk are programmers by education," says Intel's Chase. "They are physicists, chemists, biologists, mathematicians. They are first of all scientists. Secondly, they learn how to program, as an afterthought. This combination is extremely powerful."

A different mindset
IT offices are springing up on Akademgorodok's leafy lanes as well as in its industrial back alleys. The work has been easy to come by, and with good reason, for words such as "loans," "grants" and "investments" haven't a place in the local lexicon. "We're kind of spoiled in America," says James Smith, manager of emerging Internet technologies for IBM. "In Novosibirsk, they work from a different mindset. They need to generate capital if they're going to move forward and buy a house or build a business."

IBM now works with, among others, a Novosoft spinoff called Axmor, employing web mashup technologies - combining a spreadsheet, say, with a Google map - to create applications for clients in digital media and retail banking. Smith dispatches his marching orders from IBM's suburban campus in Raleigh. Axmor, meanwhile, finds itself in a renovated apartment complex on the edge of Akademgorodok, a pack of mongrels lurking about the entrance. Inside the office, two slender, sun-deprived code punchers are playing table-hockey.

Pavel Toponogov, Axmor's director, has turned a $30,000 investment into $1 million in revenue in just a few years. The bulk of work comes from outside Russia, much of it generated through Internet advertising. That is the way Harpo Productions, Oprah Winfrey's media company, hired Axmor to build a web portal. "We didn't really know who Oprah was," says Andrey Kanonirov, Axmor's IBM project manager, "but we know who she is now."