By Vestnik Kavkaza
There is a tendency of ascribing an ethnic character to domestic crimes; and the situation in the world makes it worse, according to Vladimir Vladimirov, the head of Stavropol Territory, one of the most multinational regions of Russia. “Sanctions, the absence of truth in Western propaganda, economic problems, the dollar, oil – all of them negatively influence people’s attitudes,” the governor says.
A member of the Presidium of the Council of the Assembly of Peoples of Russia, Sergey Kuchinsky, admits that the solution of inter-ethnic issues for the Russian Federation, which is a "patchwork quilt" with a huge number of languages, cultures, people - of course, this is an extremely important issue. “Our 'friends' in many respects bet on this situation, the sanctions and confrontations of today, and consider the ethnic factor to be one of the weaknesses of the organization of life in Russia.”
In this case, Kuchinsky thinks it would be very important for us not only to secure, but also to understand the underlying causes themselves: “In each case to see what government has done to minimize them, what preventive measures were taken and how the subjects of these events are acting further. It is important to improve the legislation, to take measures at different levels of government, but still it is very important to understand what is happening at each specific site. After all, these incidents, all of these problems arise in specific circumstances. Therefore, we need a professional approach on the part of the authorities and civil society, and on the part of professionals, who are still not enough in this country.”
Kuchinsky believes it is very important to create “images, meanings, ideologies, which would positively and creatively shape the public consciousness, mass consciousness in general, the younger generation, youth, and so on. All the same, we do not know the country. Here, I would like to include a channel available for Russians, where they could learn about the history of the peoples of Russia, with the cultures of the peoples of Russia, some positive experience - this is very important. We did not get enough of it in the media and with the practical work.”
The expert says that in the Russian Federation, in various regions, houses of friendship have been created: “It's a good experience, these sites are very positive, but we also know little about it. There is a house of friendship in Udmurtia, absolutely wonderful, Izhevsk, in Yakutia, Samara, in Omsk there is very productive friendship house, and in many other regions. But, unfortunately, we do not know about this experience, it is not available even for experts. Therefore, we decided in the Assembly of the Peoples of Russia to create a permanent conference at which we could collect center managers and specialists of the houses of friendship and discuss some technical things. Because a lot of what we face today with NGO leaders of national-cultural autonomies, many positions, points of view, perhaps, is declarative - we assure each other that it is bad, we have to work, and how to work, we have a lack knowledge of it.”
