Address by V. TORLOPOV,
Chairman of the Komi state Council,
Member of Federation Chamber of The Russian Federation

Dear friends!

On commission of Yegor Stroyev, Chairman of the Federation Chamber and on behalf of the Federation Chamber of the Russian Federation I cordially congratulate you on a remarkable event - the beginning of the III World congress of the Finno-Ugrian peoples.

The I World forum of our kindred peoples which took place in 1992 in Syktyvkar traced the way of development of the Finno-Ugrian world. It should be noted that at the beginning of the Finno-Ugrian movement representatives of the creative intelligentsia, scholars and humanitarians showed particular activity in discussion of the problems of national development. With the years the horizons of our movement have qualitatively expanded. Today we already speak about the perspectives of the development of the Finno-Ugrian world in the III millennium, we discuss political and social problems and, naturally, matters of preservation and development of cultural and language traditions.

In the past year another step was made in strengthening and development of our cooperation. Today, economical and cultural links among the Finno-Ugrian peoples cover practically all the levels of public life: from the intergovernmental EU program "The Northern dimension" that includes contacts among Parliaments and governments, to expansion of cooperation among different regions, collectives, single scholars, persons of culture and education. Potential and perspectives of this cooperation are giant.
I am convinced that in the new age, the new millennium our ties will get a further development. And a guarantor of that is policy of our state and position of Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

The development of our cooperation proves the wisdom of our ancestors which is very easily to express in the words "we have our strength in our unity".

Source: III World Congress of the Finno-Ugrian Peoples. Helsinki, 2000 [Joshkar-Ola, 2001], p 23.