On 31March 2018, the Higher School of Economics (123, Griboyedov Canal Embankment) was the venue for the March Dialogues in the Open Library project.
The discussion on “The Decentralization of Culture” took place between Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, and Sergei Kapkov, head of the Centre for Research into the Economics of Culture, Urban Development and the Creative Industries, a teaching and research laboratory of the Economics Faculty at Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Their conversation was devoted to the discussion of the main problems and dangers in the sphere of culture. The participants touched on questions of cultural politics and ideology, the unity of the cultural space and the reformation of culture.
It is Sergei Kapkov’s opinion that culture and education need to be taken out of the social block: “They should be spheres of the long-term development of the country. Because this is investment in people, in the population; it is something any country should cultivate. Not just the development of oil, gas and other natural resources, but also people’s educational level. That is a basic task. And to that end a new vice-premier should be created at government level to be responsible solely for education and culture.”
Mikhail Piotrovsky stressed: “I think that here it is not just a matter of vice-premiers. The situation is that this has been heeded in part, and now our most important task is to see that what has been heeded turns into something real. Culture is something completely special. It’s effectiveness is calculated for many years ahead and only then will it become evident. That is why everything here is not the same and the words are different. Take ‘centralization’ – it’s a fine word, but it doesn’t apply to culture. Because culture is a combination of the unity of the cultural space and the difference of all those who come within that space. And people need to be taught that. That the laws for culture should be phrased differently. Yes, we need to exempt culture from a whole number of law. One of the main troubles is that all our laws at the moment are hostile to culture. We need to change all these relationships and the terminology that culture is the servant of this and that. It is not the servant of the people or those in power; it is no-one’s servant; it exists by itself. That is what needs to be taught.”
A video recording of the encounter can be viewed at
http://open-lib.ru/dialogues/kapkovpiotrovsky
