Ildar Gilmutdinov: "Citizens of any nationality should feel comfortable in Russia"

Yesterday, the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation hosted a conference on the implementation of the state migration policy in the context of the Strategy of the State National Policy of the Russian Federation. On the sidelines of the event, Vestnik Kavkaza spoke with the chairman of the State Duma Committee for Nationalities Affairs, Ildar Gilmutdinov, on the results of the implementation of the Strategy for the first five years of its existence.

- What are the preliminary results of the work within the framework of the new National Public Policy Strategy? In December it turns five years.

- When we all participated in the development of the Strategy, we had doubts whether we could make it complete - after all, we have 193 nationalities with their cultures and languages, and the economic situation in the regions where they live was very different. Nevertheless, we obtained a good, very integral document that satisfied everybody - the regions, public organizations, the public movement and national-public organizations. The steps that have been taken within the framework of the Strategy are already visible: a corresponding state program has been created, the Council under the President has been working successfully, there is the Assembly of the Peoples of Russia, which implements its part of the program, the coordinating bodies have appeared in the subjects. Also, a number of laws, that impose responsibility and obligations on both regional and municipal authorities to deal with the issues of interethnic relations, were passed. In general, the strategy allowed to implement a comprehensive approach, which I consider one of the successes of our work.

At the same time, it needs to be improved, because the Strategy is not a stiff document, it has to change taking into account today's realities. For example, more attention should be paid to the questions of youth and youth policy.

- What important projects in the sphere of interethnic relations are planned to be implemented for the next three-year period in the framework of the adopted budget of 2018-2020?

- Of course, the budget of the country as a whole was significant for us, because the issue of the national policy is multifaceted: the issues of cultures, education, and the region-wide policy affect the interethnic relations and interethnic politics. In this regard, this is a very positive budget, since it is socially-oriented, it will ensure the well-being of our people. We hope that our economy will work in a positive direction, and next year we will receive additional funds that will be sent to the constituent entities of the Russian Federation to solve the social issues, which will affect greatly our interethnic relations. Within the framework of this budget, the state program of the national policy was adopted, which provides the support for the regions to hold a large number of events related to the ​​interethnic relations. I consider this an achievement, because our program is still young, we still have to work on it, but, nevertheless, it exists and consists of 8 sections

There are very many plans for the next year: we need to return to the issue of preserving native languages, the most urgent for today, and the issues related to the informational support for the implementation of the National Policy Strategy (we will inspect the national media condition, what support is needed for its functioning). A very large range of issues is associated with small indigenous peoples - there is a language issue, and the issue of identification, receiving preferences, especially for indigenous peoples of the North, Siberia and the Far East. Let me explain. They can not ,receive their preferences in full, due to the fact that the nationality is not identified in our passports. I note that our Committee is unique, because it relates to all the topics, and we want to monitor them closely, so that our citizens, regardless of their nationality, feel comfortable in Russia. This is also our task.