Moscow Wants to Homogenize Friendship of the Peoples Houses in Regions and Republics

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 4 – The Federal Agency for Nationality Affairs wants to centralize control over Friendship of the Peoples Houses across the country to ensure that they are delivering a common message and thus promoting the achievement of the goals of the Russian state’s nationality policy.

            According to NazAccent, FADN and related agencies are concerned that such institutions do not work in every region and that where they are present, they are “not always under the control of those organs of local executive power who can ensure that they promote a common message (nazaccent.ru/content/44200-v-rossii-mozhet-poyavitsya-edinaya-set-domov-druzhby-narodov/).

            To put things right, FADN plans to prepare special courses for those working in these institutions and to create a common set of rules governing exhibits and the messages they deliver to visitors, yet another way that the center is seeking to homogenize the country rather than support its linguistic, cultural, and religious diversity.

            If the nationalities agency gets its way, friendship of the peoples houses will be put on a procrustean bed that will eliminate those elements of local culture, including local ethnic Rusisan culture, that were typically the most important and certainly the most interesting of the offerings of these institutions.