"Vestnik Kavkaza"
Given the information war unleashed by the conflict in Ukraine, the CIS info coverage domain has come in Moscow's focus. However, today many experts from the former Soviet republics recognize that young people in their countries learn about Russia only through endless mediocre talk shows airing on federal channels, which creates a negative image of Russia.
Not so long ago the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications established a department for the internet and the development of e-democracy. The head of the department, Alexey Kazakov, believes that "all modern wars begin with a fight for people's minds and souls and today we do very little in terms of developing a shared ideology and a common approach to historical events."
In an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza, Kazakov said that creating a TV company will not solve anything. Information flow has to be global. Establishing connections between young people should become a trend, it should become the state policy of republics. It is necessary to restore youth organizations. For instance, I was initiator of the All-Russian non-partisan Gagarin Youth Union. Such alliances will help to restore the system of construction teams, to return the system of patronage, the system of education of the younger generation, a lot of work will get done. That is, a lot of positive elements that were present in the Komsomol organization will be revived."
According to Kazakov, "our fraternal peoples have many things in common. Our shared history is the basis on which we can unite. Victory in the Great Patriotic War, participation in other international wars, the overall economic progress and breakthroughs - all of this is the foundation for the ideological union of our peoples. Today we just need to spend more time on it. Personally, I think that today there is almost no full-scale government work in this direction. Our task today is to initiate it. We should start with a state ideology. It should appear, and this trend has to be discussed everywhere, in the media, in movies, in cultural life, in books."
Recently a great event took place - the 80th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's birth, but there was very little attention paid to it. But it was our common victory, not only of Russia, but also of all the former Soviet republics! Everyone worked to achieve this goal. Isn't it an event which could unite all the peoples together? What an event it was. But the press is silent. The strengthening of state ideology and the popularization of the event is done in an irrelevant fashion. I have repeatedly raised this issue in the State Duma and with the department on the development of the internet and e-democracy, which I am the head of," Kazakov said.
According to Kazakov, "given the current trends in the leadership of our country, I am confident that we will begin solving these problems in a comprehensive and systematic way. But it takes time, we have been living without ideology for 20 years, without thinking, we didn't have any stance. The West has convinced us we've had nothing. Today we begin to revive, it takes time. But at the same time, many people in our country are against it, there are many pro-Anglo-Saxon, European and American lobbyists and trends. We need to change it, and we will certainly be working in this direction."
