Select language:

We Opened Our Souls to One Another

 / Главная / Russkiy Mir Foundation / Publications / We Opened Our Souls to One Another

We Opened Our Souls to One Another

23.09.2015

One of the most memorable events in this year’s celebrations of the 2000-year anniversary of the foundation of Derbent, the oldest town in Russia, was the international festival “Derbent: 2000 years at the crossroads of cultures”. The festival, sponsored by the Russkiy Mir Foundation, was organised by an association of librarians from the nearby town of Khasavyurt, who attracted guests, experts and performers from 16 of Russia’s federal subjects and 15 foreign states.

 

The cultural marathon that was the festival “Derbent: 2000 years at the crossroads of cultures” was comprised of a sea of different events: literary readings, academic conferences, poetry evenings and book presentations, games and excursions, internet-reading and entertainments for children and the young. The project turned out to be a smash hit, involving the participation of over 10,000 people. For many of the guests it was their first trip to the multi-national and multi-confessional melting pot of cultures that is Dagestan, which they experienced in the ancient jewel of a town on the banks of the Caspian Sea – Derbent.


The library specialists from Khasavyurt who organised the festival prepared a special internet booklet with information about the town and the history and culture of its people. This unique internet-based resource has already garnered three million views and rising! The most popular sections of the booklet feature richly-illustrated reports, photo-reports and mini-documentary films which bring the huge variety of celebrations and events of the festival to the homes of everyone who has internet access. Those videos focusing on historical and cultural subjects have been so well-researched and presented that they have begun to be picked up by educational institutions in Russia and the CIS countries as class-material to teach children and students of the fascinating history of this “crossroads of cultures”.


The greatest intellectual authority of the festival was, without a doubt, Dr Murtazali Gadzhiev, who is scientific director and deputy chairman of the Dagestan scientific centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dr Gadzhiev is the region’s most eminent researcher on the history and cultures of ancient Derbent and its surrounding environs. At the festival, Gadzhiev headed a jury of international historical experts who awarded prizes to persons and individuals who had made outstanding academic contributions to the festival. Prize winners including librarians and academics from Abkhaziya, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Estonia, and many of the Russian regions, such as Khakasiya, Tatarstan, the Moscow Region and Moscow. The winners were invited to take part in an ethnographic excursion across the patchwork quilt of peoples and languages that make up Dagestan. The excursion began in Derbent and continued for a number of days.


During the festival, guests of the town experienced the city’s many beautiful sights, which are registered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and visited the many centres of local and traditional craft which dot the area surrounding the town. Meetings and seminars brought together schoolchildren with museum and library staff and social activists of the town of Izberbash, and many chose to visit the Akushinsky and Tabasaransky regional republics.


Those who came left with memories they will cherish for the rest of their lives. As Gulzhameriya Kazina, director of the Lev Tolstoy Kostanaisky Regional Universal Scientific Library (Kazakhstan), recounted of her trip, the valuable information and emotional experiences that the librarians from Kazakhstan encountered in Dagestan were so great, that they have inspired her to begin a new project using a similar methodology and borrowing many of the practices from the Derbent festival. She intends to give the festival the name “We Opened Our Souls to One Another”. The idea to continue the festival’s work and, in so doing, to coordinate ethnographic, archaeological and historical research across the Russian regions, was supported by many of the festivals other prize winners. There is certainly plenty of opportunity to do so; local authorities in Derbent have decided that the celebrations of the city’s 2000-year anniversary will continue for another three years until 2018.
Rubric:
Subject:
Tags:

New publications

Italian entrepreneur Marco Maggi's book, "Russian to the Bone," is now accessible for purchase in Italy and is scheduled for release in Russia in the upcoming months. In the book, Marco recounts his personal odyssey, narrating each stage of his life as a foreigner in Russia—starting from the initial fascination to the process of cultural assimilation, venturing into business, fostering authentic friendships, and ultimately, reaching a deep sense of identifying as a Russian at his very core.
Ukrainian authorities have launched a persecution campaign against the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), the biggest one in the country's modern history. Over the past year, state sanctions were imposed on clergy representatives, searches were conducted in churches, clergymen were arrested, criminal cases were initiated, the activity of the UOC was banned in various regions of the country, and monasteries and churches were seized.
When Nektary Kotlyaroff, a fourth-generation Russian Australian and founder of the Russian Orthodox Choir in Sydney, first visited Russia, the first person he spoke to was a cab driver at the airport. Having heard that Nektariy's ancestors left Russia more than 100 years ago, the driver was astonished, "How come you haven't forgotten the Russian language?" Nektary Kotlyaroff repeated his answer in an interview with the Russkiy Mir. His affinity to the Orthodox Church (many of his ancestors and relatives were priests) and the traditions of a large Russian family brought from Russia helped him to preserve the Russian language.
Russian graffiti artists from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk, and Nizhnevartovsk took part in an international street art festival in the capital of Chile. They decorated the walls of Santiago with Russian and Chilean symbols, conducted a master class for Russian compatriots, and discussed collaborative projects with colleagues from Latin America.
Name of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko is inscribed in the history of Russian theater along with Konstantin Stanislavski, the other founding father of the Moscow Art Theater. Nevertheless, Mr. Nemirovich-Danchenko was a renowned writer, playwright, and theater teacher even before their famous meeting in the Slavic Bazaar restaurant. Furthermore, it was Mr. Nemirovich-Danchenko who came up with the idea of establishing a new "people's" theater believing that the theater could become a "department of public education."
"Russia is a thing of which the intellect cannot conceive..." by Fyodor Tyutchev are famous among Russians at least. December marks the 220th anniversary of the poet's birth. Yet, he never considered poetry to be his life's mission and was preoccupied with matters of a global scale. Mr.Tyutchev fought his war focusing on relations between Russia and the West, the origins of mutual misunderstanding, and the origins of Russophobia. When you read his works today, it feels as though he saw things coming in a crystal ball...