Initial agreement to set up NRT in April 1991 From left to right: Arable Director of research farm Slavenskoje, Director of Slavenskoje, Governor of Kaliningrad Oblast Jurij Matochtkin, myself, 1st Secretary of the Communist Party Kaliningrad Oblast, James Nelstrop, Evgenij Perov, Head of Agriculture Kaliningrad Oblast
THE NUFFIELD RUSSIA TRUST 1. BACKGROUND During his scholarship in 1984 James Nelstrop met the UK - USSR Agricultural Attaché. His successor Dr Zhiltov followed up the contact in 1988 to explore how co-operation with UK agriculture might help Russian agriculture following the easing of Cold War tensions and Gorbachev’s visits to the UK. James went to Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust (NFST) and Stephen Bullock, James and their wives were invited by the Non-Black Earth Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Leningrad to visit Russia on a fact-finding mission. I had just applied for my scholarship in late 1988. Following their visit, Evgenii Perov, the Academy’s PR journalist, came to the UK as the academy’s representative to study UK agriculture as a guest of Nuffield Farming in early 1990, hosted principally by James. Evgenii became the “Russian Nuffield Scholar”. I got my scholarship but deferred it for one year, because I had a 4 months consultancy contract to finish in Pakistan. Then the Wall came down in November 1989. 2. MY SCHOLARSHIP For the Russian part of my study in summer 1990, I was the guest of the Academy and hosted throughout by Eugenii. I was also charged by NFST to select some young potential candidates for a British Council/ Nuffield/John Green funded “Introduction to Western Agriculture” a 6 week, fully funded residential course at Brooksby Agricultural
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College, 2 from Poland and 9 from Russia (amongst others, I selected in Poland Tomasz Zdziebkowski – now CEO of Spearhead International; and Victor Semenov – Minister of Agriculture in Russia 1998, Chairman of Russia’s NFU, oligarch, benefactor and chairman/principal shareholder of Belaya Dacha, a multimillion real estate and agribusiness based on the outskirts of Moscow). Both examples show what impact even small scholarships can have with the right people. 3. KALININGRAD AND THE NUFFIELD RUSSIA TRUST Immediately after my study, I was contacted via Deutsche Bank by the Governor of Kaliningrad, Jurii Matochkin, and asked to visit the Oblast in November 1990 to see whether we could help their disastrous agriculture. Kaliningrad is the Russian enclave on the Baltic Sea wedged in between Lithuania and Poland. It was the German province of East Prussia before WWII. James came along with Evgenii and with the Governor we agreed to find out whether the Leningrad Academy’s local Research Station at Slavenskoie could be turned into a ‘model’ farm (6,000ha) and vocational agriculture school. In return for us finding the funding and setting up the centre, the Academy was to put the Estate into a Russian/UK Trust (the first of its kind), so there were some assets to work with and use as collateral.
