Publications

Presidential elections are over in Russia – as reported by the Central Election Committee, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin won in the first round, having received 63.60% of all votes. Candidate from the Communist Party Gennady Zyuganov ranked second with 17.18% of votes followed by self-nominated candidate Mikhail Prokhorov (7.98%), by LDPR candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky (6.22%) and by Just Russia’s Sergey Mironov, the apparent outsider with 3.86% of votes in his support. Perhaps the political campaign of Just Russia’s leader was most languid of all. Who can remember, save for his most ardent adherents, what he said and...

Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Alexander Yakovenko spoke at the Oxford Union on February 24.  The ambassador emphasized that against the background of existing differences in approaches of Russia and Britain to internal and foreign politics, key national interests nowadays do not contradict but rather overlap.It is a great pleasure to speak in Oxford, which in different times hosted Russian Emperors Peter the Great and Alexander the First, Anna Pavlova, Vladimir Nabokov, Leonid Pasternak, Ivan Turgenev and many other famous and well known Russians, including the Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev. I am inspired by the fact that...

Juergen Trabant, Linguistics Professor from the Free University in Berlin, Germany, talks about the impoverishment of languages, the tendency towards the transformation of many world languages into regional ones, and on how to conserve the culture of multilingualism in his exclusive interview for the RMF. – Mr Trabant, you’ve authored the tenet that many languages are dying and their death is accompanied by impoverishment of the now spoken languages. What led you to this conclusion? – Sound research reveals the growing garrulity and even chattiness of many people to the detriment of the style or content. Mankind is...

In my articles I have already mentioned the key challenges that Russia is facing internationally today. Yet this subject deserves a more detailed discussion and not only because foreign policy is an integral part of any national strategy. External challenges and the changing world around us affect our economic, cultural, fiscal and investment policies. Russia is a part of the big world, economically, culturally and in terms of information flow. We cannot be isolated, and we do not want to be isolated. We expect our openness will bring the people of Russia more prosperity and culture and will promote trust, an item that has been in short...

We’ve come here to the headquarters of the Russkiy Mir Foundation to discuss the conservation of and support for Russia’s linguistic and cultural diversity as well as issues concerning governmental backing of our state language. I’d like to thank our colleagues from the Russkiy Mir Foundation for this initiative. This is a very important and relevant matter and therefore expert discussion at different venues is needed. Such discussions are the hallmark of our time and as MPs we are interested in the widest possible involvement. Several days ago I announced the formation of the Advisory Panel at the State Duma Chairman and...

The first night of August 2008 – a movie by Djanik Fayziev and the most expensive and prioritized project implemented by the Domestic Cinema Socioeconomic Support Foundation – took place last weekend at the Pushkin Cinema in downtown Moscow. The film, focused on a delicate theme of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict that flared up in August 2008, required emotional submersion and personal approach from the filmmaker. It turned out, however, that this was not Djanik’s intention. He filmed an action adventure movie and focused on love against the backdrop of the tragic events with no politics at all. Among the project’s...