Innopolis has comfortable town houses, playgrounds with Wi-Fi and a large swimming pool. Igor Nosov, its manager, holds an American MBA. The city’s free economic zone is dominated by a circular office building for high-tech firms. There is just one thing in short supply: the firms themselves. So far the building has only about a dozen occupants. “Well, we’ve built a collective farm. Now we need the farmers,” quips one of the Tatar officials. Whether those farmers will come depends on a range of factors mostly outside Tatarstan’s control.
