We Opened Our Souls to One Another
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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.