What is culture? A set of rules (often unofficial), stereotypes and norms of behaviour, according to the authors of Wikipedia, the Internet Encyclopedia. Creative activity results characteristic of a society, the collection of created by people material and spiritual values – this is a definition which can be found in Sociology and Philosophy textbooks.
But it is no accident, to our mind, that the Third Reich’s Minister of Propaganda said: “When I hear the word culture I reach for a gun.” Doctor Goebbels was a villain, but not a fool. He knew too well – the notion of ‘culture’ is inseparable from the notion of ‘politics’. Culture as inner spiritual human values should be and is the basis of politics at least at the subconscious level. It means that the society estimates any politics of action from the point of view of unwritten cultural laws.
According to Daniil Dondurey, a well-known Culture Studies researcher and the editor-in-chief of Iskusstvo Kino (The Cinema Art) journal, culture is the only way of preserving socio-political system identity, of making it meaningful, the way of transmitting the ethnic community experience in time. This phenomenon is discussed in the current issue of the Russian Expert Review by Sergey Gradirovsky, Director of the Volga Federal District Strategic Research Centre. He strongly believes that only correct implementation of cultural policy can help realize the strategic goals confronting Russia.
For a long time the term ‘cultural policy’ has been considered in our country as something closely related to the sphere of art and art alone. We pay tribute to this approach on the pages of our edition. Experts Aleksey Lebedev, Marina Yukhnevich and Gennady Vdovin debate the serious problems of Russian museums and directions of their transformation.
But cultural policy is not just museums, theatres, etc. development, but first of all acknowledgement and usage of the nation’s cultural resources to solve economical, social and political tasks. The ways of doing it are described by RER experts Sergey Zuyev and Pavel Luksha. Critic Ekaterina Zueva and documentary films director Ivan Sidelnikov tell how theatre and cinema become the instruments of cultural policy.
Discussion of the limits and perspectives of the Russian cultural policy has only recently started. By now there are very few successful projects in this field. Our country will have to multiply them and make them a part of the cultural process. And then, as our prominent film director Andrei Konchalovsky said, we’ll see that “culture is fate”.
|
