World-renowned gymnast Laishan Utyasheva (1985- ), Honoured Master of Sport of Russia, TV presenter and sport commentator, one of the spokesmen of the “Many Peoples… One Country” campaign. Ms Utyasheva is of the Bashkir nationality. The Bashkirs are a Muslim people from the foothills of the Urals in Western Siberia.
“Many Peoples… One Country” is the motto of a Russian mass media campaign aimed at the promotion of tolerance and national understanding. Since mid-December, federal broadcast channels will “rotate” five videos in which sports, movie, and show business celebrities will present their views on inter-ethnic relations and religious and ethnic tolerance. More than 80 million viewers in 300 Russian cities will be able to see them. The RF Ministry of Regional Development commissioned this project, targeting the videos at the youth audience. At the rollout of the project, Maksim Travnikov, the Deputy Minister of Regional Development, said, “Its main objective is the prevention of the spread of extremism in our country. If we, on the one hand, encourage ethnic and cultural diversity by telling the various peoples of our country about the traditions, culture, customs, and behaviours of every ethnic group, and, on the other hand, strengthen our common civic identity as well, we can largely solve the problem related to xenophobia, intolerance, and ethnic clashes”.
“The strength of our country is its wealth of nationalities”, “the people of Russia… all the people of Russia”, “we are different, but, we have a common cause”, “Russia… a symphony of nations”… millions of Russians heard these words, and others like them, over the air on television. The viewers see recognisable media personalities in the clips such as TV presenter Nikolai Drozdov, six-time winner of the World Cup Rhythmic Gymnast Laishan Utyasheva, front-man of the rock band Mumy Troll Ilya Lagutenko, singer and showman Timati, and Olympic champion figure skater Yelena Berezhnaya… The popular youth-culture singer Timati (Timur Yunusov) said, “I agreed to participate in this project because I believe that my music promotes tolerance in our society. The Hip-Hop and R & B industry involves a lot of nationalities. Michael Jackson said, ‘You can be my brother, no matter if you are black or white’. This is my basic philosophy, my main idea. So, I agreed to participate because I wanted to show my audience that no matter what colour you are, no matter where you come from, it’s important that you have a positive attitude and that you convey reconciliation, not conflict”.
In recent decades, after the collapse of the USSR, the initiators of the “Many Peoples… One Country” campaign are convinced that our society survived not only a philosophical and ideological crisis, but, also, a societal crisis of national identity. Nevertheless, the need for unity amongst the peoples of Russia because are citizens of a significant country with an honourable culture is enormous. According to Valery Fedorov, the head of the research organisation VTsIOM, “More than half of Russian students see themselves, above all, as Russians, that is, they emphasise their general civil identity. This suggests that people intuitively find a balance between their national identity and their civil identity. That is, these two identities are not locked in conflict, which is very important”.
Already, there are obvious signs of the formation of a civic nationality in Russia. It is important that this process have a positive content and deep meaning that will bring people together and give impetus to the creativity and vibrancy of modern Russia, according to those who initiated the TV project. They hope that their campaign, which aims at promoting tolerance and national understanding, will have lasting significance. After all, for Russia, where there are more than 180 nationalities speaking 239 languages, this kind of “vaccination against xenophobia” is extremely important. The participants in the “Many Peoples… One Country” campaign want to motivate our people, to show them that we live amongst many peoples with age-old traditions.
16 December 2009
Jelena Kovačić
Voice of Russia World Service
http://rus.ruvr.ru/2009/12/16/3052615.html
Voices from Russia 
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