Valery Tsepkalo, director of the High-Tech Park administration. "Nasha Niva" recalls the remarkable pages of the biography of one of the most extraordinary representatives of the ruling elite.

Valery Tsepkalo (right) and US President Bill Clinton.

Childhood in Grodno

Valery Tsepkalo was born in 1965 in Grodno. His parents - William and Nina - came to the west of Belarus for the construction of a nitrogen plant. His father graduated from the Odessa Polytechnic, his mother graduated from the Kharkov Engineering and Economics.

As a result, the parents worked at the plant all their lives. Mother worked as the head of the labor department, in 1986 she was awarded the medal "For Labor Valor".

Tsepkalo Sr. received the unusual name William from his parent teachers. At the plant, he became deputy head of the chief mechanic's department. In retirement, he was engaged in diagnostics of computer equipment.

On the Internet you can find the patent of William Tsepkalo: "Method of evaporating aqueous solutions of urea and an evaporator for its implementation."

Valery's early years were spent in Dovator Lane, he was the only child in the family. In an interview with Grodnenskaya Pravda, mother Nina Petrovna said that she felt guilty before her son because she was constantly busy with work and spent little time with her child.

“I love Grodno very much. It is always a pleasure to return there,” Tsepkalo himself said.

MGIMO and the Finnish language

Valery Tsepkalo was an excellent student at school, although he himself says that he never sat behind books all the time. “I was chasing the ball, the puck, like everyone else. When parents wanted to give in music school, then he rebelled, ”he says about his childhood. But already in the middle classes there was a passion for the book.

Tsepkalo wanted to enter MGIMO, but after school this was not possible. Therefore, I went to study at the Minsk Technological Institute. After his second year, he was called up for military service. He served in the Strategic Missile Forces. “These were the years of the demographic hole, they took everyone off course,” he recalls.

After the army, I still managed to enter MGIMO. In the Soviet system, there was no choice of which language to learn. Tsepkalo was distributed into Finnish. “Finnish is so Finnish, thank you for not being Albanian,” Tsepkalo says that it is impossible to master the language well without love for the country in which it is spoken, so I read Kalevala, Finnish periodicals.

At the end of the existence of the Soviet Union, he worked a little in the Soviet embassy in Helsinki. After the collapse of the USSR, he decided to return to Belarus, and not stay at work in Russia.

Work in Shushkevich's team

In 1993-1994 Valery Tsepkalo was an adviser to the Chairman of the Supreme Council Stanislav Shushkevich. Then Anatoly Mikhailov (former rector of YSU) was on their team. However, before the presidential elections, Tsepkalo joined the team of Alexander Lukashenko, this happened around December 1993.

It was he who organized the visit of Alexander Lukashenko to the State Duma of Russia. This happened due to connections with the Liberal Democratic Party, since there were quite a lot of MGIMO graduates in this party.

After the elections, Tsepkala was appointed First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. At that time, the diplomat was only 29 years old. It is extremely difficult to imagine something like this in Belarus today.

NN's sources say that the then Minister Vladimir Senko strongly resisted such a decision, but could not do anything. In general, Tsepkalo of those years was notable for its conflict-free nature.

Founding of the Hi-Tech Park

Andrey Davydchik, dev.by

At the age of 32, Valery Tsepkalo becomes the Ambassador of Belarus to the United States. We note again that an extremely responsible position goes to a fairly young man. It was in America that Tsepkala could come up with the idea of ​​creating a Belarusian "silicon valley". In 2002-2005 Tsepkalo was an assistant to the president, he managed to convey to the head of state the importance of creating a High Technology Park (HTP). In 2005, Tsepkalo headed the HTP, whose administration is located in the Uruchcha microdistrict.

HTP is special economic zone, its residents are exempt from paying a number of taxes in the state budget. BUT income tax for employees is not 13% as in the country, but 9%. The residents of the Park are such IT monsters as EPAM Systems, as well as Game Stream, a partner of Wargaming.

The company's products are thundering all over the world - this is Viber, World of Tanks, and MAPS.ME. There was also MSQRD. Most of the companies work for foreign customers.

“If we talk about a dream, we basically want to make Minsk, and maybe the whole republic, a big technology park where people would sit in a cafe and discuss how to create a new startup,” Tsepkalo shared his dreams.

There was a time when the HTP provided more than 10% of the country's balance of payments! “For me, ideology is the ideology of modernization, the ideology that we can be as successful as the Americans, the Japanese, the Germans - like any other successful people,” Tsepkalo said.

Last summer, Valery Tsepkala had a conflict with the Prosecutor General Alexander Konyuk. In one of the interviews, the HTP director said that Steve Jobs would have been arrested in Belarus for illegal entrepreneurial activity. To which Konyuk replied that Jobs was doing the same as in Soviet times called speculation.

Author of a book on the death and resurrection of man

As head of the HTP, Valery Tsepkalo blogged on LiveJournal. It is curious that it was signed by only three people - political scientist Yuri Shevtsov, Ukrainian banker Tigipko, and Russian public figure Skurlatov.

In 2005, Valery Tsepkalo wrote a book called The Code of Immortality: The Secret of Man's Death and Resurrection.

“Can a mortal man gain immortality? Is it possible, on the basis of the vast cultural and religious experience of mankind, to find the key to the re-creation of man in his true form? Are there any scientific reasons for this? This book tells about unraveling the mystery of a person's death, his temporary departure from the earthly world, about the possibility of his bodily return and spiritual resurrection. The most amazing thing is that there is nothing mystical here,” the annotation says.

In 2009, the publication was translated into English.

“The end of the world, if we combine it with the anthropic principle, puts equality between man and the universe, that is, the point is that a person with his mind is able to understand the universe, realize it, and therefore contain it. It was Hegel who was still trying to find out that the mind is akin to the universe. When a person dies, the entire universe is destroyed, and then there is a return, a resurrection, it remains only to remember. Remember from Pasternak: “We must remember in order to resurrect,” to resurrect means to remember,” Tsepkalo said on the occasion of the release of the book.

Today, on March 2, it became known about the unexpected decision of the president: to release Valery Tsepkala from his post. Valery Vilyamovich himself does not give any comments. In the meantime, Belarusian programmers and businessmen in the IT industry are shocked by an unexpected decision, we offer the readers of Komsomolskaya Pravda an interview with the head of the Belarusian "Silicon Valley", which we did last year. Then the Hi-Tech Park celebrated its tenth anniversary. We talked with Valery Tsepkalo about the history of HTP development, its current work, personnel, plans and prospects. Valery Vilyamovich told us about how he sees the Park in 5-10 years.

This year, the Belarusian Silicon Valley celebrates its tenth anniversary - this is the name of the High-Tech Park, which is located in the Minsk district of Uruchcha. Now the HTP unites 159 IT companies under its wing, which, by the end of the year, are expected to bring the annual volume of exports of products and services to one billion dollars! Valery Tsepkalo, who was at the origins of the creation of the HTP, spoke about how the park was born and how exactly it was possible to achieve such results.

Work on the creation of the HTP began in 2005, says Valery Vilyamovich. - The park was immediately considered as a project with extra-budgetary funding. Thanks to the assistance of the President of Belarus, we received commercial loan at 312 thousand dollars - at 17% per annum. And two years later we returned it with interest - everything went even better than we expected.

Now the HTP has 159 registered residents, and 25,000 IT specialists work here. Every year the number of employees increases by three thousand people. The income of the park administration is made up of deductions from residents in the amount of 1% of their total revenue.

In terms of revenue, we are growing by 30-40% per year - these are very good results, - says Valery Vilyamovich. - Especially considering that the global growth of the IT industry in the world averages 3-4%. 10 years ago, the creation of the park could be called a start-up. Now, every year, startups are born in our park that make a splash all over the world. Among the most striking examples of such products are the World of Tanks game, the Viber messenger, the MAPS.ME map service and the sensational MSQRD application - the very one that Facebook founder and owner Mark Zuckerberg recently bought out.

It is no secret that over 90% of Belarusian software products and IT services are supplied abroad, the main consumers are in Europe and the USA. Belarusian companies have customers to match the scale of the park: Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola Company, Bank of America, Oracle, Bosch, IBM, Deutsche Bank, Reuters, Airbus and others.

The share of the CIS market in the export of our residents is now only 4.8%, although two years ago this figure was 12.6%, says Tsepkalo. - The decline can be explained by two factors. The first reason has to do with internal Russian problems- First of all, it is the fall in energy prices. The second reason is the law adopted in Russia on the so-called national software producers - we are talking about import substitution. This means that we have to reorient ourselves from Russian market to the markets of Europe and North America. Nevertheless, among the clients of our residents there are still many large Russian companies. For example, our resident OOO Sberbank-Technologies, a subsidiary of Sberbank of Russia, creates its own banking software products. LLC "YandexBel" has been participating in the creation of Yandex services for five years. Omegasoftware develops software for large industrial enterprises Russia. Among their customers are Uralvagonzavod, Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, MZ Arsenal, Ural Locomotives, Neftekamsk Automobile Plant and a number of others. The brand "Galaktika" is also known in Russia. The central office of the Galaktika Corporation is a HTP resident UE Top Soft. It is the largest developer of "full cycle" economic software.

One of the most important issues in building a successful enterprise is employees. No wonder there is a saying - cadres decide everything. Especially when it comes to IT. Tell us about the park's experience in finding suitable specialists.

Indeed, we are building our growth on interaction with the education system. Our greatest merit is that we were able to restore the prestige of engineering education. Math and physics are starting to gain popularity again in Centralized Testing - it's worth a lot. In the field of education, we work in three directions at once. First, our companies open laboratories jointly with universities. Now 80 such structures have already been created. Secondly, based on the Israeli experience, we have created an educational center in the park. He works with adults who are interested in IT, but have a different education and want to get an IT specialty. In this center for the period 2011-2015. over 4400 people have been trained. Education is paid, but companies are ready to reimburse the cost of education for those graduates who have successfully completed the courses. Thirdly, there are numerous courses based on IT companies that take suitable people from the labor market and retrain them. Finally, we have created a business incubator in the park, which allows young people to attend various IT events, gain knowledge, share experience in the field of IT, and also find a team for a startup.

- How do you see the Belarusian Hi-Tech Park in the future? In a year, three, ten?

We intend to improve the ecosystem that we have built here in ten years. We want to continue to encourage young people to come into the IT industry so that it grows and accumulates a critical mass of development engineers. And if we talk about a dream, we want to basically make Minsk, and maybe the whole republic, a big technology park where people would sit in cafes and discuss how to create a new startup. Not somewhere far abroad, but in Belarus, where some of their compatriots have already managed to make their small firms big global companies. Using the example of HTP, we show that you can repeat this path of success, you can achieve a lot with your mind and work!

Valery Tsepkalo relieved of directorship public institution"Administration of the Hi-Tech Park," the press service of the Presidential Administration reports.

President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko signed an order to this effect today, March 2.

As the site managed to learn from several employees of the Park administration, for them the information about the resignation of Valery Tsepkala came as a surprise.

“The new director has not yet been introduced to us,” said one of the employees of the HTP administration, who asked not to be named.

Valery Tsepkalo himself did not respond to the website's request for comment.

It is not yet known who will take over the vacant post. We have not yet been able to get a comment from the press service of the President of Belarus.

11 years at the head of HTP

For more than 11 years, Valery Tsepkalo served as director of the administration of the HTP, one of the initiators of which he was.

He repeatedly told in interviews how, while still being the Ambassador of Belarus to the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he visited Silicon Valley, realizing the need to stop the “brain drain” from Belarus.

“It was insulting that in order to become successful, a person had to leave Belarus for Silicon Valley,” Tsepkalo told The Wall Street Journal.

Remembering that time, Valery Tsepkalo, in the preface to the book "Hi-Tech Park: 10 Years of Development", that he had to "work individually" with each minister, explaining the essence of his own proposals for creating an IT park with preferential tax regime for resident companies. Many of the ministers, according to Tsepkala, did not understand and did not want to understand, “someone simply did not believe that such a thing was possible in Belarus in principle.”

“Hand on heart, we have to admit that practically no one expected that the IT industry in its current form would grow in our country,” writes the head of the HTP. - I got the impression that the majority of the participants in the process from the state apparatus agreed with the idea of ​​the HTP, based on the following consideration: “Okay, let there be such a toy, since it does not require cash injections. It won't do any good, but it won't do any harm either."

How a Professional Diplomat Became the Chief IT Specialist of Belarus

Valery Tsepkalo was born on February 22, 1965 in Grodno. Graduate of the Grodno secondary school №14 with in-depth study of the English language. He studied at BNTU (1982-84), served in the Soviet army (1984-86). On the second attempt, he entered the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, from which he graduated in 1991. He began his diplomatic career at the Soviet Embassy in Finland.

In 1993-1994 he was an adviser to the chairman of the Supreme Council of Belarus on foreign policy issues.

In the 1994 presidential election, he became one of the leaders of the campaign headquarters of Alexander Lukashenko, and after his election, he became the first deputy minister of foreign affairs of Belarus.

From 1997 to 2002 he worked as the Ambassador of Belarus to the USA and Mexico.

After returning to Minsk, he was an assistant to the President of Belarus, and since October 2005, he was the director of the administration of the High-Tech Park established by presidential decree.

Today it became known that Valery Tsepkalo, director of the administration of the High-Tech Park, has been relieved of his post. Tsepkalo stood at the origins of the creation of the HTP, led it from its inception in 2005, made a very significant contribution to the development of the IT industry in Belarus.

As of the beginning of 2017, 165 resident companies were registered in the HTP, the total number of their employees exceeds 27 thousand. In 2016, the export of HTP services amounted to more than $ 820 million. The share of exports in the total production of the Park is more than 90%.

As the head of the HTP, Valery Tsepkala was remembered for his bright, bold statements, which concerned not only the Belarusian IT industry. We publish quotes from interviews and speeches from different years.

How the idea of ​​HTP came about

“I gave a lecture in Silicon Valley, and a lot of guys from the post-Soviet space came up to me ... The number of people was so large that then the idea came to me that the era of the Internet was beginning. And why, in order for a young man or girl to succeed, it is necessary to leave for the USA? Why can't we create a prototype of Silicon Valley here, in the Republic of Belarus, so that people can fulfill themselves without leaving the country, and if they do, then buying a ticket in more than one direction?

Of course, when I announced the proposal to the government, they considered me a little dreamer: “Do you even understand where you are? How are you even going to create Silicon Valley here? But at that time I was already convinced that Belarusians could be as successful as the British, Germans, Americans, Japanese, French and other successful peoples of the Earth. That we are in no way inferior, and we just need to create the right ecosystem, the right incentives, the right motivation system, and we will succeed. And we succeeded."

About the level of Belarusian IT specialists

“I will not hide: at first, the cheapness of our developers played a role. We were cheaper compared to German or American programmers. We used to say that we can do it qualitatively and cheaply. Now we do not say the word "cheap". Our programmers cost the same as in Moscow, Berlin, and some developers are more expensive than in the USA.

We now have a lot of American companies, and, by the way, in 2016 alone, exports to the United States exceeded $ 400 million. When I worked in the United States, I could not have imagined that we would ever have at least several million dollars USA. We had absolute zero there.

And now the HTP gives two-thirds - think about it! — two-thirds of all national Belarusian exports to the United States. One third accounts for all other industries: woodworking, textiles, petrochemicals ... "

“One high-profile project a year is more than enough for the Republic of Belarus. Sometimes I hear: there were Tanks, Viber, MAPS.ME, the successful IPO of EPAM, now MSQRD - but what else? Isn't that enough?

What associations do you have with IT products made in the UK, France, Italy, Spain or neighboring Poland, Lithuania or Latvia? If you think about it, it turns out that even in many developed countries sometimes there are no high-profile projects that everyone in the world would know about. There are very few self-valued products in Europe, unlike in the USA. Therefore, Belarus looks very worthy against this background.”

About the ecosystem for IT development in Belarus

"Most necessary condition for the development of the IT sector in our country will be the creation of the right ecosystem, the right environment. And this environment will give rise to companies that are really stars for us, and not only for us. And if we correctly create, support and develop this environment, then such companies will appear on their own.

It is impossible to create Microsoft, Apple or Google by any efforts - state or otherwise. There must be an initiative of some guys from below who live by this idea. And which would embody these ideas in the form of such corporations, which today stand as the economies of large countries, such as Ukraine, for example. Therefore, it was really very, very important for us to create the right environment, the right ecosystem – the cluster that I have already mentioned.”

“When people talk about Silicon Valley, many people think of venture capital funds or law firms, which will help you get into these venture capital funds, secure your intellectual property rights, and so on. But the strength of Silicon Valley is that it has a critical mass of development engineers who work for different companies. And we need to create an ecosystem in which a person with an idea can find a person who can implement this idea. And the creation of this ecosystem is possible thanks to service companies.

Outsourcing is not a dirty word. And it would be good if the state used outsourcing everywhere. Service companies may have lower returns, but on the other hand, there is no risk.

And this is a huge plus for Belarus. If a product fails in 5 or 10 years, there must be companies that can accumulate a workforce. The fact that we have both service and product companies is the strength of our IT sector.”

About landmarks for the country and entrepreneurs

“We say that we stand for development, for the growth of people's well-being. But the question is that for successful development, a more or less understandable, clear goal should be formulated.

It is important that everyone government bodies, the education system understood which direction to run. It seems to me that today we do not have such a goal.

In the same Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew said: guys, we will create an international financial center. Everyone understood this, respectively, the legislation adapted to this. The education system began to produce specialists in the field of finance who speak English. Government officials began to promote it. Diplomats began to involve the right people.

With a specific, clear and understandable goal, everyone starts to run in this clear and understandable direction.

On the model of an effective state

“The most effective, from my point of view, state is where business and government structures do not directly touch at all. Then the personal factor disappears, likes and dislikes of people. That is, the business process gets rid of a number of risks of a subjective nature. And, of course, the motives for corruption are reduced to almost nothing.

Example. In Singapore, if you do not receive a reasoned response to a request for, say, a license within a certain time, it is automatically considered that you have been issued one. That is, the flaw of the official is interpreted in favor of the applicant. As a result, no red tape. This is what you should strive for. As you can see, society only wins.”

About the article for illegal entrepreneurial activity

“In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak assembled their first computer in a garage and sold a non-existent batch to a nearby store. Then friends registered Apple, which today costs twice as much as the entire economy of Ukraine.

Having registered the company, the two Steves concentrated on production and promotion. They didn't have to staffing, internal labor regulations, instructions on fire safety with a list of those responsible, a book of accounting for inspections, invoices - forms of strict reporting and a book of accounting for such, personal files of employees, an office for rent, and even a mandatory legal address(they were in the garage).

They did not even have a subscription to the "Tax Bulletin" and many other things, without which the "correct" organization of their business is impossible. The guys just invented, made computers and sold them.

It must be understood that in our country, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak would most likely be held accountable for "illegal business activities associated with the receipt of income on a large scale, committed by a group of persons" under Article 233 of the Criminal Code. And in the States, they themselves earned money, and moved the world high-tech forward. ”

“In my opinion, liability for illegal business activities (with the exception of medical, related to people’s lives, and financial, related to the production of counterfeit money, the construction of various financial pyramids etc.). Indeed, in our legislation there is already an administrative responsibility for activities without registration.

I think that this article in the Criminal Code has remained as a relic of the Soviet economy, when only state-owned enterprises could exist. And if someone decided to do, say, sewing denim suits (they were called “guild workers”), then his activity was qualified as illegal, he was arrested and had to serve a long term in prison.

But the time is different. It is impossible to imagine without private business modern economy. And without the right of people to do something (hence - entrepreneurship), to dare, to try, development is impossible.

About paying taxes

“Issues with taxes should be resolved calmly, through negotiations between the authorities and business entities, as is the case in the United States, in Europe and in the developed countries of Asia. We need civilized approaches in solving economic problems relationship between the state and citizens. With regard to business entities, the approaches applicable to murderers, terrorists, robbers, drug dealers and other asocial elements are no longer seen. After all, entrepreneurial people not only do not pose a danger to society, but on the contrary, they create jobs and contribute to economic growth.

In developed countries, the procedure for considering cases related to the payment of taxes is determined by civil law relations. The criminal aspect falls on the most extreme case, when the possibilities to resolve the issue within the framework of civil law relations have been completely exhausted.

You have to understand that companies like IBA bring currency into the country. We can penalize a company that imports $40 million a year and blame it for importing another $1 million. But this is logic turned inside out. After all, the company could not bring anything to the country at all if it decided to develop its business not in Belarus, but, say, in Poland or Lithuania, which sleeps and sees, in order to drag Belarusian IT companies to Vilnius, where technopark.

About the education system

“The education system must adapt to the needs of the market. There is no need for government orders, because no one knows what will happen in 5 years. It is necessary to raise the prestige of teachers. And we need to launch initiatives to support natural science and technology education.”

On competition in the global market

“There is no business without loss. A director state enterprise has no room for error. If he has three successful new projects, and the fourth one did not go, then the leader can be seriously punished “for miscalculations in economic activity". Therefore, most of our directors do not take risks, do not go for innovations, since by definition they involve risk, they do not try to introduce something new.

There is no such thing in the world. There, the leader is evaluated according to general indicators. economic activity. Failure is not punishable. Therefore, to our deepest regret, our enterprises will continue to lose in the competition.”

About what makes a citizen out of a person

“I have a dream: I would like to see every Belarusian as a host. The owner of the land, the owner of factories, factories ... I would like each of our citizens to acquire property in their own country.

Ownership brings a person closer to God. For God is the Lord, the lord, the owner of being. And a person, in order to approach, become like God, it is also necessary to become a master, owner, master. With property, a person acquires the basis of personal dignity. Man is proud of his property. He is also proud of his country - the place where he is the owner. He would not exchange such a homeland for anything and would not offend anyone!

Privatization, in my opinion, should pursue two main goals:

1. Giving each Belarusian a worthy share in the national wealth of the country.

2. Attracting investments in the modernization of enterprises and obtaining funds for the state budget.

Belarusians can become a nation of owners. To do this, they must be endowed with land and means of production. To endow with the property that would tightly connect our people with their ethnic homeland. That property, which makes a nation out of a people, an ethnos, and a citizen out of a person.

In preparing the material, excerpts from interviews on the portals TUT.BY, kp.by, sp.by, nv-online.info, onliner.by, quotes from Valery Tsepkalo's speech at the project

A new place of work opens up great prospects for many. But at first, the employee has a fear of not living up to expectations, lack of self-confidence and fear of doing something wrong. And in an attempt to quickly get used to new job, insulting mistakes are often made that worsen the situation.

How to facilitate the period of adaptation to a new workplace?

Psychologists divide adaptation into 3 stages:

1. Addictive. There is a process of acquaintance with the rules of the company.
2. Self-expression. With the help of their professional qualities you occupy a certain place in the team.
3. Integration. You are already becoming a full member of the team. your experience and professionalism valued by colleagues.

In practice, things are different. There are only two aspects here: skill to interact with guidance and Everyone wants to be appreciated at work.

Have you coped with the difficult task of the authorities in a new place? If yes , then you will be able to adapt easily and quickly .

You just need to familiarize yourself with the following tips, and you will definitely know how to behave in a new team:

1. No flattery. In the first few days, the new employee will be under close scrutiny. Even if you liked your colleague's new shoes, you shouldn't immediately tell everyone about her good taste. Better get to know her better.
2. redundant self-confidence can only spoil the relationship in the team.
3. Learn to control your habits. If you like to think aloud, constantly open the window to ventilate the room, or often talk on the phone, you should first find out if this is not disturbing those sitting next to you.
4. You should not compare your old place of work with the new one in front of everyone.
5. refrain from