Olzhas Suleimenov, Director of the International Center for the Rapprochement of Cultures under the auspices of UNESCO, Ambassador, Co-Chairman of the Council of Elders of#nb
2025-09-20 10:04
I welcome the efforts of the World Public Assembly and wish all of us to bring the time of conscious interdependence of all peoples and cultures of planet Earth closer.
Dear friends!
I greet you and congratulate the World Peoples Assembly on this new status. Every year, the Assembly becomes more important, bringing cultures and their representatives closer together, those who bear responsibility for the future of our peoples.
We take this opportunity to express our gratitude and respect to Andrey Yuryevich Belyaninov, the Secretary-General of the Assembly, the Chairperson of its General Council Svetlana Konstantinovna Smirnova, and everyone who made this meeting possible for the truly important work which you devoted yourself to.
I consider it important and timely to discuss the topic "Spiritual Culture — a space for searching for meanings and values." We have been concerned about this vital set of issues for several decades.
For us, people of the word, the main result of creativity and culture is a person who reads and transforms with you. But it’s still a non-holiday time for the book. In the twentieth century, shortened by wars, our peoples managed to go from listeners and viewers to great readers and great authors. But in recent decades, the process has been reversed. Independence in social phenomena has spread to literature, giving rise to independence from books in society.
Can the next decades be a time of conscious interdependence between the book and the nation? We should, before it’s too late.
It’s time to return to the best experiences of the twentieth century. Towards the revival of the system of social and state order, politics and culture, which once created the country of the "great reader".
It is probably in this area that we, the writers, search for meanings and values that will help our peoples survive in the 21st century as reading nations.
I welcome the efforts of the World Public Assembly and wish all of us to bring the time of conscious interdependence of all peoples and cultures of planet Earth closer.
Director of the International Center for the Rapprochement of Cultures under the auspices of UNESCO, Ambassador, Co-Chairman of the Council of Elders of the World Peoples Assembly