Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:
Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, friends. As you know, both the Government in general and I personally maintain regular contacts with representatives of industries and social organisations, since we believe that this is the only way one can understand life in all its diversity and detail, and thus successfully respond to what is happening in the country.
Unfortunately, meetings like this are held very rarely. I can count the number of such meetings I have attended on one hand. I remember holding an expanded meeting with representatives of the Russian cultural community in Paris in 2005. It was mainly attended by people who are directly involved in the creation of literature, both poetry and prose. In other words, men of letters. The meeting was initiated by the then French President, Jacques Chirac, as part of the Paris Book Fair. Our delegation assisted in organising it.
In 2007, I met with young men and women of letters. I attended some such meetings before that, but not very many.
However, such meetings are very important since literature has always been an essential intellectual component of the Russian mentality, and a true brand of our country, Russia.
Whomever I speak with - be it Europeans, Asians or Americans - their prime associations with Russia are Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin and other Russian classics. Everyone speaks about them with pleasure.
Literature certainly is the pride of our nation. I would like to reiterate that it has always been an essential intellectual component of the mentality of the multicultural Russian nation.
It's common knowledge that Russia has always been a reading nation; we often mention this fact. Russia has even surpassed the Soviet Union in terms of the number of titles published. At the end of the 1980s, the number of book titles published stood at some 80,000, while it reached 123,000 in 2008.
However, circulation has fallen somewhat. But still, the number of titles published has increased.
Nevertheless, one has to admit that this increase in literary activity is limited to Moscow and St Petersburg, with 80% of published books circulating in these cities. Access to literature in provincial regions is inadequate, and the quality and price of books leave much to be desired. People in small towns and villages receive very little. This is the first problem.
Another concern is a diminished interest in books, which is also an obvious fact. Statistics show that last year 40% of Russian adults didn't read any books at all, and young people are reading even less.
There are various popular explanations for this fact, and I won't be telling you anything you haven't heard before when I say that the blame usually falls on the Internet. In my opinion, this is only one of the reasons, and not the fundamental cause.
Because if a young person has an opportunity to take up an interesting book, a book that deals directly with young people's life, reflects the environment they live in, and touches on the problems they consider critical, such a book will inevitably find its readers.
This is also one of the contemporary challenges I suggest discussing today.
Finally, another difficulty we face is purely practical problems linked with book publishing, literary activity in general, and relevant funding. We all know - and my colleagues from the older generation know it better than I - that in the Soviet times men and women of letters received more support from the state, to use the jargon of a technocrat, than representatives of the working class. This support seemed significant only in comparison with the support that others received. Still, men and women of literature often received awards, dachas and social benefits. The state tried to create a special environment for them. But obviously, the government expected, and sometimes even demanded, that writers observe the rules of the ideological game in return.
Today the state does not expect anything of this kind from men of letters, does not demand anything, but there is no support either, which I believe has had an impact on the quality of literature. A writer, a poet - a creative person in general - lives like everyone else: they have to earn a living, feed their families; they have certain demands that need to be satisfied.
It so happens that when facing the demands of the market, which sometimes turn out to be much harsher than the demands of a government that expects complying with ideological rules of the game, representatives of the cultural community, and not only those engaged in literature, are eager to sacrifice the quality of their works to meet these demands. One needs to be more aggressive and market-friendly, and bring in revenue. We know that sometimes this poorly correlates with quality, or, in this case, quality literature.
Finally, the state directly intervenes in several areas where our interests coincide. By "our interests", I mean the interests of a particular community and the state. For example, the need to support the Russian language in this country and in the world in general.
You could not help but notice that we have been trying our best to support the Russian language, especially in the CIS countries. There are a lot of opportunities for cooperation for us here. We hold forums, organise various festivals and major cultural events in the CIS as well as in overseas countries.
We do not have to look far for an example. China, our neighbour, is currently holding A Year of Russia, and is organising nationwide events to promote the Russian language and songs. In fact, I was surprised to see how enthusiastic the Chinese are about these events.
The interest in the Russian culture, literature and language is very high in many other countries.
We can do a lot in this area if we join hands.
Now I would like to go back to domestic issues, specifically awards for those who have made truly great contributions to culture.
Unfortunately, no man or woman of literature has been awarded the State Art and Literature Prize for the last three years, and only two people have received the Government Literature and Art Prize during the last several years.
By the way, I have given instructions to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Culture to reconsider the terms for giving out these awards so that representatives of your community will receive the Government Prize annually.
We understand that it's not a systemic solution, but it's a necessary courtesy to people who contribute much to culture.
Today's meeting will highlight these issues, as well as everything else that you believe warrants discussion.
Mr Rasputin, you are welcome to take the floor.
Valentin Rasputin: I would like to start by thanking you for meeting with us on your birthday. Fifty-seven is middle age, the age of maturity-you're not young but neither is your life over, because long lives are no longer rare. And statesmen get more stamina the more they work. May God grant you a long and fruitful life! Happy birthday! We wish you luck and success, because your success means Russia's success, which we will all share. Because your private life - I am not sure you have any private life-seems to have merged with your public life. This is a great burden.
Mr Putin, you are talking about literature with us writers. I have with me a list of Russian literary magazines available at present. All of them-from the Right and the Left alike-have one and the same problem. Last year alone has cut their circulation by a third. A half of them will not survive another such year. What will their end mean for Russia?
If you look back at the 1980s, then you will remember that the literary magazines caused a revolution, if we can call the changes of that time "a revolution". Novy Mir and several other popular magazines had enormous circulations. Literature was the strongest vehicle of public education. It contributed tremendously to the sweeping social processes of that time. When it all finished and the usual routine came into its own, we realized that we would yet be nostalgic about the magazines that were telling us the truth and cared about literature, the way it should be. It all had an abrupt end soon.
The world knows Russia mainly from its old literary classics-not modern classics, mind you. Present-day Russian literature might be known, more or less, in China and other neighbouring countries. The rest of the world is almost ignorant of it because literature has receded into the background worldwide, Russia being no exception.
Real good books are out of the limelight now. Pulp fiction sells best. As for literature that concentrates on ethics, the human soul and the nation's destiny, it comes out in far smaller number of copies and has negligible readerships. Many worthy writers give up those themes as they see that this is not the field money and names are made in.
Literature has been ousted into the backyard of school curricula. Children read only on rare occasions, and a majority of parents are too busy to mind their children's reading habits.
Literature is on the outskirts, though we have many excellent authors.
The huge schism in the Russian literature of the 1980s has become smaller, as far as I know. Anyway, it is far less exposed to the public.
There are all kinds of writers, and that is good-it takes all kinds to make the world. But there are authors whose books children should not open-and they are the biggest moneymakers, while truly gifted writers who deserve large readerships are obscure.
Schools have done much to spoil public taste and downgrade literature. But then, the government is doing nothing, as far as I know, to promote the literature that has brought up a nation that has achieved great things.
So your invitation to writers was something of a surprise to me-especially on your birthday.
Vladimir Putin: This is mere coincidence.
Valentin Rasputin: It was a pleasant surprise, and I hope such meetings will become common. I feel bad when I talk about literature because I have seen too many avid readers give up reading under the impact of the television and the latest fiction after many years when literature inspired them, reassured them, and made them strong enough to survive through hard times.
Though literature is a mighty and sublime thing, too many are turning their back on it now. I think that is why they lose strength and assurance, and the seriousness of perception the time we live in deserves.
Despite all that, real good literature is always a triumph of which first separate people and later entire nations become aware. A good book used to be a national treasure because not only Russians but all Soviet people read such books.
Now, only few people retain reading habits. One gets an impression that the bell tolls for literature. It may be really so because computers take too much time and stamina to mind books. The literature you see in computers hardly deserves the name of literature. It develops an aversion even to Leo Tolstoy, Chekhov and other classics with all their virtual travesties. This is something one should not put up with. Meanwhile, there is no way to subdue the computer world. It is a law in itself, and I don't think there is a mightier power now.
But if we really want to revive morals, patriotism and the nation itself ... It is hard to say now whether the nation survives the way it used to be. What we have is mere population-largely through the fault of new literature and the new public treatment of books, while literature should by no means recede into the margins.
I am sorry, I should be talking about other things here.
Vladimir Putin: Why? You are saying the right things.
Valentin Rasputin: I have brought you some letters from the public to persuade you or someone else to mind literary magazines. They must be helped if they are to keep afloat. If they die, not only reading habits will die with them but also the ability to treat one's country the way it should be treated.
Vladimir Putin: I would like to say a few words, too.
The first thing I want to say in response to what Mr Rasputin has said is that reading habits are really vanishing worldwide. Russia is no exception here. Is the Internet to blame? Perhaps it is. New means of communications rival literature-but the world web will never substitute for literature because literature is spontaneous thinking. Spontaneous thoughts might find their wording in the Internet or on paper-it does not matter, only the form is a bit different. But then, writers are like composers or mathematicians. They create new things, and no matter what form their brainchild assumes-not that the form does not matter at all but it is secondary to the content.
Humanity has entered a new development stage, and cannot turn back. It should be taken for granted. There is no way to reverse progress.
You know no worse than I do, and possibly better than I do that new means of expression appear every now and then in music and pictorial arts. Take our compatriot Alfred Schnittke. His music appeared sophisticated to the extreme. One did not think more complicated music could have been written-but contemporary composers write music of which experts say that no unprepared listener can hear out a piece from beginning to end. But some people enjoy such music and say that is the only way music should be today.
The situation in fine arts is much the same. Be that as it may, whatever trends might be in fashion, and whatever expressive means previously unheard-of might be used, Russia and all the other countries will return to eternal, absolute values to look at them from the point of view of the latest world perceptions. This is my profound conviction.
Such return to eternal values is inevitable. All new gimmicks will be forgotten unless they are linked to such values, so I do not think there is reason for trouble. Such fancies and obsessions are short-lived.
Mr Rasputin, when you were speaking about problems with teaching literature at school, and blamed the school for many of the adverse present-day trends, it occurred to me that you would also say the government was not doing its bit, either. As for Novy Mir and other thick literary magazines, I have thought about the reasons for their overwhelming popularity in the 1980s. I think you will agree with me when I ascribe it to Soviet society of that time being ripe for changes. It had enough of ideological monopoly, of poverty and isolation, and of comparing our country to the prosperous developed nations. Those magazines opened to the public a window on other views, on the truth and freedom. That was one of the major reasons for their popularity.
The situation is different today.
Valentin Rasputin: But then, this viewpoint might be offered to readers today, too-it exemplifies a different vision.
Vladimir Putin: You took the words right out of my mouth! You are quite right, and I think the government has not been doing enough because not all spheres of human life can be squeezed into the procrustean bed of market relations.
Not all things can make money in the market, especially when it comes to creativity, which we want to be honest and generate quality products.
It is the government's duty to support creativity, and we will see what we can do. It boils down to grants and budget expenditures-we cannot invent anything else. What we need is another budget clause and fairly modest allocations through the Culture Ministry. We will think about it.