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President Vladimir Putin met with members of Russia’s creative elite at Derzhavin House in St Petersburg to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dmitry Likhachev.

Opening the meeting, Mr Putin noted that the academician’s thinking and ideas could in many ways serve as the departure point for solutions in science and culture today, and for bringing about a broad revival of enlightenment traditions in general.

Mr Putin noted that Dmitry Likhachev wrote a lot about the spiritual education of the young generation and called on the country’s creative and scientific communities to pay this issue greater attention. It is important to help children and young people find their way through the flow of modern information and teach them to distinguish good from bad, true from false, and to revive interest in genuine cultural and spiritual values.

Culture also plays an invaluable role in reaching a balance between integration and preservation of the unique cultural identities of small and large peoples. The affirmation of the principles of tolerance, mutual respect among peoples and harmony are of primordial importance in a multiethnic country, and culture plays a key part in promoting these principles. Furthermore, in the words of Dmitry Likhachev quoted by the President, cultural criteria also determine state sovereignty.