The Ulyanovsk governor removed Dina Rubina from “Total Dictation”

Instead of a text written by writer Dina Rubina, on April 6 in Ulyanovsk they wrote a dictation about a local artist. "Total Dictation" - an all-Russian literacy test - has been taking place since 2004. All over Russia and in embassies abroad they write the same text. And only in Ulyanovsk, Governor Sergei Morozov decided to replace the dictation approved by the organizers.

Allegedly, he was embarrassed that there was obscenity in the writer’s works. “The work of a writer who actively uses profanity in his works does not correlate with the concept of “Total Dictation,” said Morozov. True, in the universities of Ulyanovsk everything was like everyone else’s - they wrote Rubina’s text (in which, of course, there was no swearing) , but in schools and local cultural centers - about the artist at the behest of the governor.

In past years, texts specifically for “Total Dictation” were prepared by Boris Strugatsky (2010), Dmitry Bykov (2011) and Zakhar Prilepin (2012). Moreover, it is surprising that Prilepin’s prose, full of profanity, did not raise any questions from the governor last year. The governor's press secretary, Vyacheslav Kobyalko, told Echo of Moscow that Morozov made the decision under pressure from the local public, who did not like the choice of the author of the text. According to him, the Ulyanovsk public believes that Dina Rubina’s work does not correspond with the idea of ​​the action, which stands for the purity of the Russian language and improving the culture of writing. In response, writer and poet Dmitry Bykov, who himself composed the text for “Total Dictation” in 2011, noted that the reason for everything was Rubina’s “national roots.” Bykov added that then it is necessary to replace the texts of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gorky and Tolstoy, because they all also used obscenities.

Rubina’s “national roots” really worried the “public,” and not only those in Ulyanovsk. On March 6, Komsomolskaya Pravda published a column by the publication’s correspondent Ulyana Skoybeda, “Why is Israeli citizen Dina Rubina teaching us Russian?” Skoybeda admitted that she could not understand why the text of the dictation was written by an Israeli citizen and not by our Russian writer. “I’m probably completely stupid, but I don’t understand why the text for “Total Dictation” this year will be read by Dina Rubina,” wrote Skoybeda.

Also, according to her, she does not understand why Russian football clubs buy black foreign players (they say, it is not surprising that bananas are flying on the field), Vladimir Pozner, with his American citizenship, allows himself to call the State Duma a “state fool,” and “Estonian” Mikhail Weller constantly "teaches us to live." In general, “an outside perspective is useful, but one must always remember that a foreign agent can pursue his own goals, different from Russian ones...”. KP wrote again about the “foreign agent” Rubina in connection with the story in Ulyanovsk. By the way, the text of the “foul-mouthed” and “emigrant” Rubina in Ulyanovsk was replaced with an essay by “KP” columnist Peskov about the artist Plastov.

Dina Rubina herself read her text at Novosibirsk State University (NSU) - the tradition of “Total Dictations” came from there. In total, 30 thousand people wrote dictation in 2013 - and not only in Russia, but also by those same “emigrants” abroad.