Translated material
Burn with the verb...
Yuri Luzhkov already knows how to repurpose a casino
On the eve of the presentation of his next book - the essay “On Love”, which will be published simultaneously in Russian and Georgian, the mayor of the capital Yuri Luzhkov became concerned that Muscovites read little. And those who do read choose the wrong literature for themselves. At a meeting of the capital's government, where yesterday the reading promotion program was discussed, the mayor seriously proposed repurposing the casinos into bookstores. “There are about two thousand gaming establishments in Moscow, which we will be closing in the near future ,” the mayor noted, proposing to create “book addiction centers” in their place. “Who is stopping us from solving this problem?”The capital’s mayor’s office has already calculated that the share of actively reading people in Russia today is 26%, which is almost lower than the world average. Despite the fact that Moscow, compared to other Russian regions, still looks more enlightened, occupying, according to the Chairman of the Committee on Telecommunications and Media Vladimir Zamuruev, 7th place in terms of the number of reading population among large metropolises of the world, the quality of the literature consumed by the residents of the capital officials are not satisfied. “Fiction has been supplanted by gloss, in which thoughts are cramped,” said Mr. Zamuruev. According to him, Muscovites prefer entertaining reading and functional literature to highly cultural works of art and recognized classics. According to the relevant department, there are not enough bookstores in Moscow - now there are 292 of them, 48 of which are state unitary enterprises. There is one bookstore per 30 thousand Muscovites, while in Prague there is on average one second-hand bookstore per 15 thousand inhabitants, and in Budapest this figure is even higher.
The chairman of the Moscow City Duma, Vladimir Platonov, who is also the head of the capital branch of the Russian Book Union, also sounded the alarm. According to him, the number of families in which a love of reading is instilled from early childhood is inexorably declining. If in the 80s children were read to in 70% of Russian families, today only 6% of parents introduce their children to books. In addition, the analysis of literature for minors itself raises concerns among the city committee on telecommunications and media for the “intellectual gene pool” of the capital. Therefore, representatives of the legislative branch of government are now, along with the promotion of reading, agitating for prohibitive methods of influencing the literary choice of adolescents. “Young people read a lot of magazines that promote obscenity,” said Lyudmila Stebenkova, chairman of the Moscow City Duma’s commission on health and public health. Today, according to her, “the market must be freed” from periodicals that are dangerous for young consciousness.
In search of methods of influencing Muscovites, the capital's deputies and officials went from one extreme to another. In addition to the mayor’s already mentioned idea of repurposing the casino, there were proposals to print quotes from Agnia Barto and Samuil Marshak on sweet packages, advertise books on billboards along city streets, and link the release of printed materials with television series. The city's financiers even had to cool down the inspired saviors of the gene pool, capable of using any budget for their programs. “622.1 million rubles are allocated for the promotion of reading. for 2007-2008, but there is not a single off-budget financing project,” recalled the head of the complex of economic policy and city development, Yuri Roslyak.
In general, the program for promoting reading, which also included the banal allocation of funds for the purchase of literature for city and school libraries, was approved by members of the capital’s government as a “fish”, which should be finalized within a month taking into account all the proposals, the main one of which is to interest publishers in cooperation and printers. “There is a business that wants to participate in the expansion of book trade,” said Yuri Luzhkov, “and the budget needs to be spent on expanding and replenishing libraries.”