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.
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