By Vestnik Kavkaza
In Russia where a lot of problems occur because of aggressive nationalism people have realized that the foundation of spiritual unity, the inter-ethnic and inter-religious dialogue should be culture.
“In the Soviet period the culture, traditions and civilization were formed on the basis of the Russian language and Russian culture. At the same time, judged socialist realism and long-imposed atheism influenced the process,” Aslambek Paskachev, the chairman of the Board of the All-Russian Social Movement “Russian Congress of the Caucasus Peoples", said at a round table in the Public Chamber. “It is impossible to understand culture, to understand peoples and their essence without communications, studies, thinking over it. We can see that the estrangement of people which happened after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the negative processes which took place in our country estranged people in the CIS space and inside our country. And the centrifugal processes which took place and bloody conflicts are results of the process.”
“The establishment of an artificial structure which appeared in recent times through the mass media or lack of knowledge about culture among young people, I mean not only the cultures of other nations, but their own culture. It was the most negative factor which influenced breaking the contacts,” Paskachev thinks. “It is necessary that the development of culture is based on Russian culture and the Russian language. But we see that Russian culture needs support today. But it doesn’t mean that only Russian culture should be developed; it means that Russian culture and the cultures of other nations should be developed. For the first time our country has adopted a Strategy of State Ethnic Policy. And there are key issues, goals and tasks of the state ethnic policy – the preservation and development of cultures and languages of the peoples living in Russia, the improvement of their spiritual unity. For the first time in our modern history the authorities of the country realize the importance of the problem.”
Meanwhile, Father Sergey Matyushin thinks that “a society is doomed to death and extinction without spiritual foundations. Culture is a great part of what humanity has worked out during its history, and one of the components of culture is religion. And we can speak about such a notion as a culturally-composing religion of the country. And there are several such religions in our country. All of them are equal before the law, our state law. The state tries to take care of all culturally-composing religions.”
“Every religion has its own principles, foundations, rules. And it is impossible to make them similar. But our traditional world religions have something in common, and we can rely on this. It is striving for the good, striving for love, striving for brotherhood, fighting against evil and selfishness. We can hold on to these common foundations, world view foundations, when we speak about dialogue and cultural exchange,” Matyushin believes.
However, according to him, “if people don’t know their own religion, it is senseless to try to communicate with other religions. So we need to accumulate knowledge about our own culture, and then we will have an opportunity to speak about learning other cultures. The world is full of seductions. The consumer society imposes its values on us. The spiritual foundations of society will unite us and we can “overcome the awful conflict in the world.” All religions tell us that it is not a consumer society that should exist, but a world of mutual brotherhood and love. If we build our society on this foundation, it will develop.”
