Society and culture: The meeting of the Council for Culture at the Chairman of the State Duma of Russia held in Moscow

December 16, 2013 at the A. S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow was held a regular meeting of the Council for Culture at the Chairman of the State Duma.

Opening the meeting, the Chairman of the State Duma Sergei Naryshkin noted that in the past year the priority in the work of the Council for Culture were issues of copyright protection, legal in creative teams, peculiarities of legal regulation in the field of arts education.

An important outcome of the work, Sergei Naryshkin called the project of a concept of a new teaching complex on the national history - a document containing "agreed recommendations for the creation of modern textbooks".  

Speaking about the upcoming activities of the Board, the Chairman of the State Duma proposed without delay to involve in work on the preparation of the Plan of the main activities of the Year of Culture, which declared in 2014. According to him, it should be a contact with the regional parliaments to ensure that activities of the Year of Culture took over the place and covered all the national territory.

Presidential aide Vladimir Tolstoy expressed the hope that the Year of Culture is not limited to a set of bright events, and was a year of "true enlightenment", as indicated in his address to the Federal Assembly, and the culture, breaking departmental, sectoral nature, became the basis of a way of life.

Saying that by April 1, 2014 is planned a draft of Basis of state cultural policy, V. Tolstoy suggested the Council on Culture and the Chairman of the State Duma to take part in this work. The new policy, in the words of Tolstoy, should be directed to the formation of cultural needs and overcoming the crisis of humanitarian workers, and legislation should fully take into account the specifics of the industry.

Deputy Culture Minister Gregory Ivliev told about the plan of events dedicated to the Year of Culture. In particular, it is planned to modernize the material-technical base of cultural institutions in small towns. One of the priorities will be the construction of multipurpose centers. By 2015 it is planned to build 50 such objects. A particular attention will be paid to historical centers of small towns and the development of the historical and cultural tourism, tour and exhibition activities, festivals and culture of the peoples of Russia.

Director of the A. S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts Marina Loshak advocated for increasing the humanitarian component of education in schools and universities.

Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Sergei Zheleznyak, touching upon the copyright protection, said that the appropriate agreed a package of bills is coordinated by 95% and work on it can be completed at the beginning of the spring session of 2014.

State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin noted that the major anniversaries – the 700th anniversary of St. Sergius of Radonezh, the 250th anniversary of the Hermitage and the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War will unite the society in 2014.