George McGurn may be 6 feet tall, have been a dean at one of the United States' largest private universities and once helped New York through its biggest fiscal crisis, but when it comes to economic reform in Russia, he likes to think small.


"Creating small businesses is the fastest way to create jobs," said McGurn, 50, who, for eight years, was head of Boston University's 8,500-student business school for graduates and undergraduates. Now, he is the general manager of the Morozov Project, a Moscow-based organization which teaches people how to start small businesses.


"We want to create a critical mass of entrepreneurs who are competent, ethical and committed to making a market economy work," said McGurn, a dapper Chicagoan whose round glasses lend an air of academia to his business suit. "In order to do that, we are getting broad and deep in the Russian regions."


McGurn said the project, the largest of its kind in the world, has established 39 training centers employing 3,000 trainers from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok. Some 15,000 graduates have gone on to create jobs for a further 130,000 people, McGurn said.


The program was hatched in 1990, when McGurn was leading a group of U.S. bankers to the former Soviet Union. After giving a speech in which he urged the need for a large-scale retraining program, McGurn said he was approached by Vladimir Groshev, the chairman of Inkombank.


"I said that if the Soviet Union were serious about engaging in the global economy, it would have to undertake a massive retraining effort," said McGurn. "Groshev asked for my help to turn those ideas into reality."


McGurn took a sabbatical from Boston University to work in Moscow on the nascent project with Groshev and the heads of five Russian economic academies."At the time we had no money, just ideas," said McGurn, who moved to Moscow with his wife.


In the spring of 1992 the project secured a promise from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for about $36 million for the first training center. Morozov continues with money from the U. S. Agency for International Development, which has provided "$15 million to $20 million," McGurn said. He predicted that planned U.S. government cutbacks in aid are unlikely to greatly affect the project.


"It will not change our financial sustainability strategies, but it might move up the time frames a bit." He said that 60 percent of Morozov's $20 million yearly operating budget now comes from the Russian private sector. Plans call for the project to be self-sufficient in three years, at which point, McGurn said, he will consider leaving it.


To increase revenues, the project aims to offer consulting services to multinational companies that need help setting up small-scale affiliates in the hinterlands. With training centers throughout Russia, Morozov has had a hand in everything from finding local investors for a dental-filling manufacturer to supporting an entrepreneur who opened Russia's only private company producing dressings for burn victims.


McGurn said that he enjoys leaving a mark. "Everyone aspires to have a legacy, but in this rapidly moving environment you can see your own develop, which is kind of unusual."