Interview by Timur Utsayev, exclusively to VK
After the war, the notion of culture was almost leveled in Chechnya. The Chechen Minister of Culture, Dikalu Muzakayev, told a VK correspondent about efforts aimed at the revival of culture in Chechnya.
- What are your topical priorities in developing cultural life in Chechnya?
- Today we are making our first steps in creating a national symphonic orchestra. I am quite convinced that it is very important. It is important that the people of our republic would live in the contest of the world’s spiritual culture an would be able to offer cultural values matching the global level. Creating a symphonic orchestra could help our people adapt to the Russian cultural context, and through it – to the world's high culture. It could help people regard the actualities of their life in a different way. Only an educated people with high cultural demands can be regarded as a truly civilized in our modern world. Only such a people can accept the values of modern civic society.
The Chechen people, as no other on the Caucasus, loves classic art. Unfortunately, it has never been truly developed in this region. However, the existing demand for classical art gives us an opportunity to work on the creation of our own musical theater. The works of thee best Russian classical composers – Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff – will be included into our repertoire. We could create a united all-Russian culture only through the spiritual and cultural components. Only when all peoples of our country accept and start to take part in this common cultural heritage we will be able to create a united nation.
We do all we can but we lack qualified candidates. The government of the republic supported us, it created special education facilities and a state symphonic orchestra of Chechnya. Not every region has its own symphonic orchestra, and the residents of the republic support this initiative. We also develop choreographic art, but we have lots of work to do in this direction too. We hope to pass on from a show level to a deeper on, for example, start making performances.
- What is today’s human resources potential of Chechnya in the area of culture?
- We do all we can to attract young people to the establishments of higher education connected to the area of culture. I won’t lie to you and say that our results are great, as Russian culture-related establishments of higher education often have some prejudice towards representatives of our Republic. But the Federal Ministry of Culture and personally Alexander Avdeyev support us. We are experiencing a shortage in human resources, especially in the area of music. There’s also a major problem with establishments of cultural recreation in our villages. Some of them don’t even have libraries, and those which exist are not comfortable, which doesn’t serve to their promotion.
We try to create comfortable environment for our young people to take up science. We hope it will help increase the percent of intellectuals in our society which would help establish social balance.
We have recently opened a national music school in a building that was donated to our Ministry. his is a very important step for us. Before we only reproached Russian establishments of higher education foe not accepting our students, but didn’t do anything to properly prepare them, but now we have an opportunity to give them necessary secondary school education. we are building up a proper cultural environment so that our young people could meet the requirements of Russian Universities, and after they get this higher education and return to the Republic – than we’ll be able to talk about a positive change in the cultural climate of our republic.
So the most important aspect of the problem is to work with the young people. We invited a director from Moscow to our youth theatre, and the young people are very much interested in this cultural exchange.
- What place does culture hold in the life of Chechen society now?
- Culture, as all other aspects of Chechen life, is being revived only since 2001. This revival (unfortunately, only revival, and not development) started from the area of spiritual and religious practices. I honor the memory of my friend Akhmad Kadirov, and all the intellectuals of our Republic respect him as he understood that material restoration of the region is important, but the spiritual restoration is at least as much important too.
Culture is very important for every region, so I think we’re on the right track. But we still have a lot of problems, one can’t restore a totally destroyed area by magic in one instance. The most important thing is that the restoration process is ongoing, and of course the intellectuals should head all the initiatives related to cultural and social development.
I’ll tell you the truth, for now the workers of the area of culture are for the most part enthusiasts. Caucasus has always been known for its craftsmen and jewelers, as well as other professionals in the area of culture, and I hope that we are on the way towards restoring this former glory on the professional basis. The culture has always been a very important aspect of the daily life of the Chechen people.
- And what is the social position of the cultural workers?
- We enjoy the support of Ramzan Kadirov who participates in all cultural forums. We have a great deal of moral and financial support. He is a person of internationalist views and he understands that the culture should be lifted to a higher level.
The federal target program ending in 2012 also helped us a lot. But if you compare pre-war situation to the current one, you’ll see that we’ve lost 100% of material basis for our culture and 80% of personnel. For example, we’ve lost the whole professional symphonic orchestra. No professional classical musician chose to stay in the Republic. We were living through a peak of cultural development, but all was lost in an instance. 350,000 of museum storage units have been lost, and we restored only 35 of them. But it is very important that the restoration process is launched, and I hope we’ll be able to catch op with other regions of Russia.
No other culture in the world has such a vast multi-ethnic potential as Russia does. But unfortunately our culture is sometimes in a greater demand abroad than it is at home, and I think we need to change this situation.
