Fuel for Thought in Russia

As a student, it's not always possible to study highly debated issues where they are most controversial. This is precisely what happened to Nathalie Sabbatucci, a 23-year old Bocconi student in her second year of the Master of Science in Economics and Social Sciences, when she stepped foot on the MGIMO campus, the huge state university in International Relations in Moscow, to study energy as part of the Double Degree that Bocconi has with the university. And she was able to discuss the issues behind gas and petroleum in the country that is at the center of the international debate of supplying these commodities at the moment.

"Energy is a very current issue," says Nathalie, "so it was interesting to discuss the issue with local professors and hear their point of view of the situation, particularly regarding the relationship between Russia and Ukraine. This is a problem for them, since exportation of petroleum and gas is an important source of revenue. We discussed plans for expanding on the Russian market and the hypothesis to bypass Ukraine, like with the 'Nord Stream' gas pipeline project that goes from the Baltic Sea to Germany and thus Europe." A 55 billion cubic meter per year project, for which Russia (Gazprom holds 51% of the Nord Stream joint venture) will need the approval of the countries bordering the sea to go through with it. It's more of a geopolitical issue than a technical one, which will require a reinforcement of the relationship between Moscow and the European Union.

The MGIMO was a happy surprise for the young Bocconi student: "It was an enormous campus, so much so that it was easy to get lost in the hallways. To make up for this, our class sizes were small, some even had less than 10 people. And the number of professors – all very young – was high. This made it easy for professors and students to interact and it created a stimulating environment for debate." Nathalie, who came to Bocconi with a strong quantitative base, dedicated her studies at MGIMO to more managerial subjects: "We had the opportunity to get to know the energy market better, in its logistical aspects, its sources, its regulation, its international problems. And everything else involved in the 'world energy complex.' It's a way of approaching the topic that has been very important in stimulating a critical outlook on the issue."

She did, of course, run into a few obstacles, like coping with the web of Russian bureaucracy to hurry along her administrative documents to Moscow, or her encounter with the Cyrillic alphabet, "which is different when written in capital or lower-case letters." Coming from a 5-month internship in Mauritania for the UN, a Campus Abroad in Brazil and an Exchange in Singapore, Nathalie's first impression was that it was a "cold" country, and not just in terms of temperature. "The first impression is that Russians are like that, but then, after you get to know them, you find out that they're extremely nice. They seem to have kept a kind of 'psychological' legacy from the regime even today, which makes them particularly discrete when discussing certain topics. Like politics, for example."