Culture and authority: Vladimir Putin has supported the idea to declare 2014 the Year of Culture in Russia

President of Russia Vladimir Putin has supported the Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matvienko to declare 2014 the Year of Culture in Russia, which he expressed at a meeting of Legislative Council, but it called to fill it with real measures to support culture in the country.

“I have nothing against. On the contrary, I fully support it. We need only to think along with you, with colleagues from regions, because it should not be the Moscow event but the Russian one”, - said Vladimir Putin.

“If we do this we need to fill it with something and this should be not just a holiday. This should be the year which would allow us not just pay more political attention to this critical areas, but we need to build up the work so that the budgets to set up – both federal and regional…, so that people working in the cultural sector and generally all Russian citizens felt the results of work during the year”, said the head of state.