Russian President Dmitry Medvedev chaired a meeting of the Council for Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights. “Practically all the presentations contained one very true thought that a considerable number of people living in the Caucasus need full integration into the Russian social environment,” Medvedev said, ITAR-TASS reports.
“We should also move towards creating, as has been pointed out quite correctly, a full-fledged Russian identity that would encompass all of our peoples,” the president said. “The task is to create such new Russian identity. If we do not create it, our country will have a gloomy future,” he warned.
Medvedev stressed the need to deal not only with security and judicial issues, but also with public, including multinational, integration. “We should build the future that will integrate everyone,” he said. Otherwise “there will never be normal life in the Caucasus”, he added.
Mr Medvedev said that many of the North Caucasus’ problems are linked to poor social organization, unemployment, and very low living standards. The President said that tackling these problems requires the authorities at every level to work together actively with non-governmental organizations.
Mr Medvedev outlined a number of directions this kind of cooperation can take, including working on youth issues, carrying out job creation programs, fighting corruption, and strengthening the traditions of friendship and mutual respect between different ethnic groups.
Events in different countries in the 20th century show how prosperous nations formed through hardships. “We failed to create a community that the Soviet system was trying to create, but we know what it was like and that it was largely false in many ways,” the president said.
“But we have all the forces and possibilities for creating our own identity – a new Russian identity,” he said. “These are probably lofty things, but we cannot but think about them. Otherwise we will only deal with very sad things and we will have no vision for the future. And this is something without which a person cannot live,” the president said.
