Neither the current economic crisis nor our cash-strapped government have been able to rid Russia of the influence of various people pushing their "projects of the century." The last one we had was the effort to reverse the flow of several major Siberian rivers. Now, a number of government agencies have received a working paper concerning the construction of a high-speed railway between St. Petersburg and Moscow.


Shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the joint-stock company High-Speed Rail was formed in St. Petersburg, based on foreign capital and protected by the city government. The main goal of this company is to get as much money as possible out of the federal government.


This project is an outgrowth of a larger idea: the construction of a high-speed railway called "Center-South." The idea behind the project is that a passenger getting on an evening train in Moscow should be able to disembark in the morning in Crimea or the Caucasus. The trip from St. Petersburg to Moscow should take about three hours.


While the project was being developed, however, airbuses appeared that were capable of taking half a trainload of people to Crimea in only two hours. Then, of course, Crimea became part of a foreign country and the Caucasus were gripped by constant civil strife. The demand for the entire project disappeared, but its initiators continued to push the Moscow-St. Petersburg line.


The most important characteristic of people who support these fantastic projects is that they try to base their fantasies on huge sums of very real money. To this day, the company has not submitted a detailed technical or economic analysis of the project. Instead, it brought the government a request for 400 billion rubles in low-interest credits. The company itself proposes to contribute only 4 billion rubles. When government officials read this proposed distribution of the risk -- 99 percent to the government and 1 percent to the company -- they were simply stunned speechless.


It seems the company's persistance and shameless economic paternalism stems from its director, Aleksei Bolshakov, a leading figure in the military-industrial complex. During his years in the defense industry, he undoubtedly got used to asking for and receiving as much money as he wanted.


It is possible that the sheer scale of the high-speed rail project is attractive to politicians like St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak, and they consider supporting the project to be a laudable political act. Moreover, people in government-owned industries no doubt see the project as a way of winning lucrative contracts.


The construction of high-speed railways could lead to considerable technological progress in the area of transport. However, such projects are the domain of rich governments, those with extra economic resources. The project calls for many special elements that simply are not produced in Russia.


But the most important stumbling block is, of course, money. The St. Petersburg company estimates the ultimate value of the project to be $36.2 billion, while the estimate of experts at the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development is $6-8 billion. Quite a difference. Even the French company that is a partner in the project has stated that the Russian government will not see any profit out of the project until at least 2015.


But, no matter what, the project continues and requests for funding keep coming in.