In January, during the run-up to Russia’s March 4 election, the front-runner, Vladimir Putin, proposed “a canon of 100 Russian books that every school leaver will be required to read at home … and then write an essay about one of them.” Reading, according to Putin, is not just an elective individual activity, but one that has decisive implications for the nation. “State policy with regard to culture must provide appropriate guidelines,” he wrote in an essay in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper, and culture shapes “public consciousness and … patterns of behavior.” The Kremlin’s duty, Putin explained, is to counter the decline in literacy and restore Russia as “a reading nation.”

In January, during the run-up to Russia’s March 4 election, the front-runner, Vladimir Putin, proposed “a canon of 100 Russian books that every school leaver will be required to read at home … and then write an essay about one of them.” Reading, according to Putin, is not just an elective individual activity, but one that has decisive implications for the nation. “State policy with regard to culture must provide appropriate guidelines,” he wrote in an essay in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper, and culture shapes “public consciousness and … patterns of behavior.” The Kremlin’s duty, Putin explained, is to counter the decline in literacy and restore Russia as “a reading nation.”

(via thelifeguardlibrarian)

  1. bibliophibious reblogged this from jyhslibrary
  2. jyhslibrary reblogged this from thelifeguardlibrarian and added:
    In January, during the run-up to Russia’s March 4 election, the front-runner, Vladimir Putin, proposed “a canon of 100...
  3. sioskurismouf reblogged this from thelifeguardlibrarian
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  6. poesizing reblogged this from thelifeguardlibrarian and added:
    There we go again, waxing and waning about how much reading people did during the communist regime, but what people...
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  8. mistakeonpurpose reblogged this from thelifeguardlibrarian and added:
    the intention is gd but the idea itself is fucking crazy
  9. skrampo reblogged this from thelifeguardlibrarian
  10. This was featured in #Lit
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  13. learnforlife said: Interesting. I wasn’t aware of this…
  14. thelifeguardlibrarian posted this