Cancellation of Russian Culture Is not Russia's Problem – Konstantin Bogomolov at the WYF 2024

On March 3, 2024, as part of the World Youth Festival, a creative meeting with Konstantin Bogomolov, Director and Artistic Director of the Moscow Drama Theater on Bronnaya took place at the Media Stream, organised by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, Rosatom State Corporation and ANO Dialog.

The creative meeting was held in a Q&A format. Visitors were particularly interested in how to make a meaningful content in demand and bring it to a wide audience, especially in the context of the cancellation of Russian culture.  

"Cancellation of Russian Culture is not Russia's Problem. This question should be addressed to the people of those countries where Russian culture is cancelled, because they are losing a gigantic layer of absolutely great culture. Russia is a part of world culture, and one of its most significant parts in the whole range of arts. How can one live without Russian literature, without Russian music, without Russian painting or without Russian theatre, which has been one of the world's leading theatres for the last 20 years after the failure of the 90s. I can responsibly say that Russian theatre is among the three best theatres in the world by the quality and level of directing, by the quality and level of acting, by the quality and level of spectacles" he commented.

Konstantin Bogomolov also noted that one of the amazing properties of Russian culture is its receptivity to other cultures:

"The essential peculiarity of Russia and Russian consciousness is that it can easily and joyfully absorb very different best works of world culture. It's part of the cultural code, which is why we've never had the cancellation of foreign cultures. For example, during the Second World War, no one could think of cancelling Goethe. How can you cancel Faust? How can you cancel Hoffmann? That's unrealistic. "This is ours. This is mine," is the way Russian culture thinks. That's why, by the way, Russia and the Soviet Union have an outstanding school of translation that is not found anywhere else in the world."

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The World Youth Festival is taking place at the Sirius Federal Territory from March 1 to 7, 2024, as per the decree issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin aimed at fostering international youth cooperation.

The Federal Agency for Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh) is the organizer of the World Youth Festival, with the Directorate of the World Youth Festival serving as the operator for WYF-2024.