St. Petersburg Headquarters

Ulitsa Chaykovskogo, 12A
St. Petersburg, Russia 191187
Telephone: +7 (812) 327-97-95
Fax: +7 (812) 327-97-99

St. Petersburg has been CCI Russia’s headquarters since 1986. During that time, all of CCI’s programs have operated from Russia’s cultural capital. Currently the office employs a dozen staff persons who run the Productivity Enhancement Program (PEP) and the Next Steps Program.

CCI’s first St. Petersburg office was in the home of a Petersburg citizen, Vladimir Shestakov, CCI’s longest Russian employee. A well-known citizen diplomat in Russia and the U.S., he’s been equipped with modern technology since the mid-80s. During Russia’s attempted coup in 1991, CCI San Francisco received dozens of emails from Shestakov, providing the only information available on closed-off Leningrad’s plight against coup leaders. America’s major TV networks used this fresh news before on-the-ground U.S. journalists could break through troop-guarded barriers.

In 1992, CCI’s Petersburg operations graduated to a space at the historic Smolnyi Institute. This pre-Revolutionary structure is best known as Tsarina Katherine’s palace for training young women. Lenin subsumed Smolnyi in 1917, and afterward it became the offices of the new Bolshevik Government.

In 1995, CCI leased a three-story property in central Petersburg, out of which the ever-growing organization ran several USAID-funded CCI programs.

In 1999, CCI’s Russian Initiative for Self-Employment (RISE) was given a 200-year old, two-story property in return for renovating it. Today the RISE Training Center, RISE Fashion Library, PEP and Next Steps anti-corruption program occupy the newly renovated space.