The prime minister told the teachers, engineers and biologists of tomorrow that money was not the most important thing.
Vladimir Putin met with students at the Tomsk Polytechnic University. The meeting lasted several hours. They talked about life. Putin advised the students not to seek happiness in money but to do what they enjoyed most, even if it was not the best paid profession.
Judging by what the students said, many of them are members of youth organisations and part of the Popular Front, so they were very positively disposed towards Putin and promised to support him in the upcoming presidential elections. One student admitted that when he heard Putin’s famous Munich speech, he wanted to shake the prime minister’s hand “for telling the truth that many people back then were afraid to voice.” But the question asked by the future Russian language and literature teacher concerned domestic policy – how to raise the status of his profession and of course the pay.
“Of course there are certain spheres of activity, such as business, where you can earn a lot of money, and there are some where you won’t earn a lot, however much effort you put in,” the prime minister argued. “But that is a choice each individual has to make.”
A female student from Kazakhstan complained that she has a temporary registration at the student hostel, which is only valid while she is studying at the university. After that she will no longer have an official “place of residence” and without that she will not be able to take out a loan or get a regular job.
“Are you saying that without your registration you won’t be able to get a job?” the prime minister asked, clearly taken aback. When he received an affirmative reply he promised to significantly increase the funding for building new student dormitories over the coming years.
Putin said that young people are the backbone of his reforms. He was not going to campaign for students to vote for him in the presidential elections, but he did say that young people were the most forward-thinking section of the population:
“I am counting on our young people adopting a mature approach to the elections, to approach them on a rational rather than on an emotional level. I am confident that young people are in a position to do this without being subjected to a constant stream of information, that they will think for themselves and make their choice. Who you vote for is something you have to decide for yourselves.”
The prime minister said that he was happy about the heated discussions taking place on the Internet in response to the recent State Duma elections and upcoming presidential elections. He explained that this was happening in order for the structure of civil society to form, adding that he had no problems with those people who were giving him a hard time on the Internet. The main thing during heated polemics was “not to break the cultural code” and not to use expletives, the prime minister went on to say. As a final attempt to convince the students, Putin pledged that there will never be another dictatorship in Russia.
Anastasia Novikova
