Art critic Mikhail Kazinik is an amazing genius! His speech at the Federation Council is unforgettable! (video). Speech by Mikhail Kazinik at a meeting of the Federation Council as part of the “Expert Time” project. Full video Speech at the Kozik Federation Council

From a speech in the Federation Council, Mikhail Kazinik: “If our country, when planning its budget, wrote “Culture” as number 1, then all other areas would automatically rise by many percent.
One percent added to culture is the same as fifteen percent to health care, it is the same as twenty-five percent to education. We have been convinced of this for a long time.

Why? Now I’ll try to prove it”

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Soviet and Russian violinist, lecturer and art critic Mikhail Kazinik spoke at a meeting of the Federation Council as part of the “Expert Time” format.

His story was dedicated to the place of culture in people's lives, the education of talented youth and the careful preservation of their spiritual principles.

The famous art critic called on legislators to pay close attention to the issues of cultural development of the nation.

Main points from Kazinik’s speech:

1. Culture should be in first place in the Russian budget

If our country, when planning its budget, wrote “culture” as number one, then all other areas would automatically rise by many percent. One percent added to culture is the same as 15% to health care or 25% to education. We have been convinced of this for a long time. Where culture comes second, money for healthcare will have to come first. Because people without culture get sick. Any country is great because of what it has contributed to the world’s collection of civilizations, and not because of how much sausage it has eaten over a certain period of time. Culture is the most important thing.

2. The school stubbornly pretends that it is from the 19th century.

Ask any philologist teacher at school what Pushkin’s fairy tale about the fisherman and the fish is about. Everyone will say: this tale is about a greedy old woman who was left with nothing. Another stupidity. Will Pushkin waste time condemning yet another greedy old woman? This is a tale of an old man's unconditional love. It is easy to love a beautiful, generous, intelligent woman. Try loving an old, dirty, greedy old woman!

And here is the evidence. I ask any philologist: “How does the Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish begin?” Everyone tells me: “Once upon a time there lived an old man and an old woman by the very blue sea.” Right? “That’s right,” say philologists. “That’s right,” say the academics. “That’s right,” say the professors. “That’s right,” say the students. “Once upon a time there lived an old man and an old woman by the very blue sea...” This is wrong! It wouldn't be Pushkin. “Once upon a time there lived an old man and an old woman,” this is the most ordinary beginning of a fairy tale. And from Pushkin: “An old man lived with his old woman.” Do you feel the difference? Because it's yours. Pushkin gives the code: his own, dear, 33 years together. Flesh of the flesh.

Next I ask the philologists, where did they live? “Well, by the sea! Right by the sea!” And that's not true. By the bluest sea. This is Pushkin's second code. As the old woman desires, she ceases to be her own, and the sea changes color. Remember? “The blue sea has become cloudy and black.”

All I'm talking about now is about culture. About another school, about smart teachers who will do such a thing that children will then read books all their free time, and not surf the Internet, and all sorts of “Pharaohs” and groups with obscenities. And the school pretends that it is from the 19th century. From those times when there were two programs on television: the first - Brezhnev, the second - Kosygin. And the newspaper "Pravda".

3. Teachers are seriously inferior to the Internet.

We live in a completely different world. Everything must change, because today teachers are not informants. Not Ivan Petrovich, who said to read page 116 about Chomolungma. And the Internet, which has 500 thousand links to Chomolungma, the highest peak in the world. From there you can learn about Tibet, about ancient cultures, about ancient knowledge, about the shadow of a teacher, and so on. What kind of school is this? Today, any normal Internet boy will give 100 points in advance to good old Ivan Petrovich, who has the book “Methods of teaching geography in the fifth grade of secondary school” on his shelf at home.

4. Children need to play literary games.

School should be motivated by joy. Our children only have ten years, the best years of their lives are from 6 to 16. What are we doing to them? For ten years, six hours a day - isn't that a crime? With such speech, with such rhetoric, it often makes me scared. Why didn’t any teacher at school, when telling the fairy tale about the priest and Balda, tell the children the truth? That the entire “Tale of the Priest and His Worker Balda” by Pushkin is a struggle between two sounds? Pop is “o”, and “Balda” is “a”. Pop says, okay, it’s round, and from left to right it is read the same way - “pop”, “pop”.

Mikhail Kazinik: “Culture is the alpha and omega of civilization. This is the only thing that represents humanity in true harmony and meaning. Answers to many questions are in my “children’s” book “Gimlet in the Land of Light”

Persuasive Speech Standard

Today, the standard for inspiring, persuasive speaking is TED talks. TED's motto: learning through fun. This means communicating ideas in an engaging and understandable manner.

If a person has the gift of presenting ideas in an easy and exciting way, it increases his ability to influence.

Mikhail Kazinik’s speech at the Federation Council, which blew up the Internet, is, in my opinion, an example of an impressive, incomparable speech.

Any speech by this speaker is an event, a discovery, a positive “brain explosion.” And it is no coincidence that Mikhail Kazinik was a participant in the TED conference, speaking on a topic with the figurative title “The school is dead. Long live the school!

What features do TED-style talks have and how is this reflected in Mikhail Kazinik’s speech? Can his speech be called not only impressive, but also effective? What influence did it have on the fate of Russian culture?

Emotionality as a way of conveying the main idea, the main message

The standard for a TED talk involves the speaker's ability to convey to the audience a passion for the topic and a commitment to the message. People feel the source of inspiration in the speaker himself, who both lives and cares about what he talks about. His speech is not monotonous and scientific, but full of emotions, vivid images and accents.

My public speaking mentor, Hollywood Speakers Guild President Klaus Hilgers, put it this way: “The effect on an audience is that you are yourself and enjoy what you do.”

In a strong speech, which has a powerful emotional impact, the main idea is always clearly visible, what Stanislavsky called the super task. This is the main purpose of the speech, what the speaker wants to implant the idea into the minds and hearts of people.

The speech should not only be impressive, but also effective. You can't just say the text. The goal of any speech is to change people’s worldview, to change their point of view to a more perfect one. The worst thing that can happen during a public speech is that people left the same way they came, nothing has changed.

When preparing a speech, a professional speaker always asks questions that determine how accurately he can formulate his goal: “Why does the audience need to listen to all this? What valuable things will they learn? What should my audience do after the talk? What do I want to lead them to?

The main idea is a clearly formulated message that relates to the purpose of the speech. This is the “dry residue”, a semantic concept, a phrase that should remain in people’s minds, even if they forget everything you said. People will not be able to memorize everything that is said, but they will remember vivid examples and individual ideas.

The speech of art critic Mikhail Kazinik before the Federation Council is an excellent example of a speech built on an emotional dramatic principle. His speech, like a good play, has a beginning, a beginning, a climax, and a denouement. He educates through entertainment, storytelling, and culture-shock examples.

This is how Mikhail Kazinik voices the main idea of ​​his speech at the very beginning of his speech: “I listened to what important and serious problems you have to solve, and now I want to take the conversation to a slightly different world, in a different direction. For some it will seem strange, but for others it is nature, meaning. I will now say one phrase, after which I will begin to prove that I am right. If our country, when planning its budget, wrote “culture” as number one, then all other areas would automatically rise by many percent. One percent for culture is the same as 15% for health care and 25% for education. Why? Now I’ll try to prove it.”

He conveys this idea very figuratively, with a lot of living examples from literature, and repeats it in different variations several times throughout the speech.

Repeating the main idea several times during a speech so that it is remembered and has an impact is what I call the Stirlitz principle. Remember the phrase from the film “Seventeen Moments of Spring”: “Stirlitz knew that the beginning and end of a message are remembered”?

Here's how Mikhail Kazinik uses this principle of repeating the main idea.

In the middle of the speech, he again emphasizes the main message, the concept of which could be formulated as follows: “Culture should come first in the country’s budget.”

Here is an excerpt from his speech: “What is culture? Worship of the light. Who is Ur? This is the god of light. And cult is worship. The second, Latin meaning of the word “culture” is cultivation. When the sun shines, it cultivates and gives growth forward. Culture always comes first because it is the cultivation of the soul. The planet bows to the light, not the darkness. Where culture comes second, money for healthcare will have to come first. People without culture get sick. Even oncology is the result of a lack of light. This is darkness. I know people who live thanks to my films about culture. Every film is an attempt to open the human soul, to tell a secret.”

During his speech, the speaker supports the main idea with strong arguments. What are strong arguments? Clarification of concepts, life stories (how it was, how it became, what happened and why), statistics, demonstrations (during the performance, Kazinik plays the violin, illustrating his idea). All this draws attention to the topic and keeps the audience interested throughout the entire time allotted to the speaker.

At the end of the speech, he again repeats the main idea, summing up the speech: “Remember, they used to write: the violin played, they cried? Why doesn't anyone cry today after a concert at the Philharmonic? And something is missing. And one day I realized what was missing. I need not an hour, but a whole conference on culture, so that you do not approve the second place in the country’s budget for culture. So that you approve only the first place. Cultivating the soul is the main thing. Without this, everything is lost. Everything we do is the equivalent of culture. Give money to the wrong place - they will spend it in the wrong place. Any country is valuable because of what it has contributed to the global treasury of civilization, and not because of how much sausage it has eaten.”

And Stanislavsky would have believed it!

What other techniques allow Mikhail Kazinik to have an incredibly strong emotional impact on listeners?

To understand this, let's turn to Stanislavsky's system. The principles of this system are valid not only for actors, but also for speakers. Let's look at two important concepts from this system: stage action and belief in the proposed circumstances.

Actions according to Stanislavsky are a mental struggle with obstacles. This answers the question: why don't they do this? For example, culture should be the main focus of the country's budget. Why isn't this true? Is it all about ignorance? We will fight ignorance. The way to fight: we ask uncomfortable questions ourselves and answer them ourselves.

This is how Mikhail Kazinik does it. He asks the question: “Why did the violin play before and everyone cry, but now not?” And he himself answers: “Because something is gone... People without culture get sick, even oncology is the result of the lack of light.” Throughout his talk, he addresses the audience with thought-provoking questions that change perspective on important things that are known but not well understood.

The principle of “faith in the proposed circumstances” is manifested in the fact that Mikhail Kazinik, as a speaker, is not afraid to look comical, since he believes in what he says. He talks about his story and what touches him personally emotionally. The speech of this speaker is full of metaphors that make the speech very lively and dramatic: “cultivation of the soul,” “the planet bows to the light, not the darkness,” etc.

Master of vivid storytelling and novelty of presentation

Let's take a closer look at the distinctive features of TED-style talks, such as:
1 the speaker’s ability to illustrate his speech with stories and examples;
2 the ability to teach new things and make a speech unforgettable, to present the content in such a way that it is difficult to forget.

This is in keeping with the best traditions of the ancient Greek approach to public speaking: the art of oratory has not changed since the times of Ancient Greece. The founder of business communication, Aristotle, believed that persuasion must include three things: ethos, logos and pathos.

Ethos is the internal makeup of a person, his characteristic features as a speaker, his individual manner of behavior. And this is what affects the level of trust of the audience.

Logos is a harmonious presentation of material, an appeal to reason with the help of data and statistics. Logos must be combined with what Aristotle called pathos. Pathos is an appeal to emotions, heart, soul. In other words, any idea should be supported by examples or stories. For one idea - one or two examples or one story.

The special ethos of Mikhail Kazinik, his touching and most sincere, almost childish manner of communication could not but arouse sympathy even among such a reserved audience as members of the Federation Council.

Being a brilliant art critic and possessor of unique literary and historical knowledge, Kazinik makes excellent use of storytelling. He skillfully tells stories and gives “killer” literary examples, masterfully combines “arguments and facts” and does it in his own unique manner.

For example, he analyzes Krylov’s fable “The Casket”.

It would seem, why? What does this have to do with the additional allocation of money for culture - the main goal pursued by the speaker? Honestly, I, as a person with a philological education, was ashamed that I, like most people, so misunderstood the meaning of a famous literary work. It turns out that “the casket simply OPENED (the emphasis is not on the word “simply”, but on the word “opened”), that is, there was no secret to opening the casket, which even the master never found, but there was simple human stupidity that leads to because people tend to exaggerate problems and complicate things instead of first assuming that the lid was never closed. The analogy with life situations is very simple. Many of us have had this happen: for example, the TV doesn’t work. We call the repairman, and it turns out that the batteries in the remote control are simply dead. The moral is simple: don’t complicate things, check simple, obvious things.

Mikhail Kazinik makes these “tasty” analyzes of literary works to show how culturally society and education have degraded, how superficially even the teachers themselves have a command of the material and therefore are unable to either captivate children in their studies or instill a love for science, literature, art, and that means to life itself.

After all, culture and education are designed to prepare a person for life, to make him capable of improving the world, to instill moral values... And great works of literature and art provide such correct guidelines.

Using the example of an analysis of Pushkin’s fairy tale “About the Fisherman and the Fish,” Mikhail Kazinik shows how this work, if understood correctly, can teach tolerance and love for one’s neighbor, no matter what he may be.

This is how our brilliant speaker justifies this: “Ask any teacher, and he will tell you that this is a fairy tale about a greedy old woman. My dears, this is yet another nonsense. Will Pushkin waste time discussing another greedy old woman?

At this point, the speaker takes a short pause, which gives weight to the words. Speakers know that a pause can sometimes say even more than words. An appropriate pause is a powerful technique to influence the audience.

And then Mikhail Kazinik says: “This is a fairy tale about love. About the unconditional love of an old man. It's easy to love an intelligent, generous woman. You try to love an old, dirty, greedy old woman. How does a fairy tale begin? Once upon a time there lived an old man and an old woman? No. An old man lived with his old woman. Because it’s still OWN. Then: they lived by the blue sea (emphasis on the word “blue”). The sea ceases to be blue, just as the old woman ceases to be her own. What am I talking about now? About culture. About another school. About other teachers who will do such a thing that children will spend all their free time reading books and not looking at pornographic pictures. The school pretends to be from the 19th century. No, we live in a different world. Today it is not teachers who are informants, but the Internet, which has 500 thousand links to Chomolungma.

If you tell children that the violin is the most cheerful instrument, they will not believe it, because a symphony, a philharmonic society, darkness immediately appears. But the violin was born as an attribute of jesters (a dialogue between two cats, a small one and a large one, is played on the violin). If you show it this way, the child won’t even notice that they are playing the violin.

School should be motivated by joy. The best years of children's lives are from 10 to 16 years old - what are we doing with them? After that they come out with such a speech, with such rhetoric that I feel scared. Why didn’t any teacher tell the children the truth that the fairy tale about the priest and his worker Balda is a struggle between two sounds, “o” and “a”? After this, the children would enjoy playing literary games. And who knows that the fairy tale about the hen Ryaba is a parable about chance? Every person gets a chance in life: not an ordinary egg, but a golden one. And he must understand that they don’t fry eggs out of him.”

Masterpieces, incomparable examples – what can I say!

Is the end the end?

The skill of a speaker is especially evident at the beginning and end of a speech.

First, you need to be able to “melt the ice in the audience” and instantly capture the attention of listeners. The final stage of the speech is strategically the most significant. After all, the last words continue to influence the listeners, even after the speaker has already finished his speech.

The conclusion is the best moment for the climax, and therefore the speech must end on a high emotional note. As in music, the last chord of speech should sound with a powerful accent, create an incentive, cause an emotional outburst.

At the end of his speech, Mikhail Kazinik told an incredibly touching story about how his violin music helped establish contact with the dolphin civilization. He was invited to an event held at sea on a ship, the birthplace of the dolphin civilization, to play violin music for them. Several hundred dolphins swam to the sound of the violin and listened.

Then, to complete the impression, Mikhail Kazinik played this music on the violin for members of the Federation Council. Personally, I cried.

Why did this story become the climax? Because in this way the speaker demonstrated at what the highest level the perception of culture is in dolphins and how much it has degraded in people.

He ended his speech with an appeal to members of the Federation Council: “My dears, watch my films. I know that someone has problems with the nervous system, with health, and in general it’s hard to bear such responsibility as you. Please go to another world. You will help yourself and your health. I embrace you with music."

The Great Orator's Mistakes and His Triumphs

What's the end result? Did this outstanding speech achieve its goal - to change the point of view of members of the Federation Council on the place of culture in the country's budget?

Here is the adopted budget for 2018 for the items “education”, “health care” and “culture”: education - 549.3 billion rubles, health care - 363.2 billion rubles, culture - 93 billion rubles.

So, Mikhail Kazinik’s speech made a strong emotional impression on the audience, caused thunderous applause, but did not motivate them to put culture first in the budget. Why?

In my opinion, there are several reasons.

1 The audience, represented by the Federation Council, was not initially tormented by the question “to be or not to be,” whether or not it was necessary to allocate more money for culture. This brilliant speech was listened to by people who do not make their own decisions. In other words, this audience had NO GOAL to change anything in this area.

2 It was not clear from the speech how allocating more money to culture will help raise the cultural level of society so that it reads literary works, listens to music, and perceives cultural values ​​differently. It is unclear what exactly the money should be allocated for and why it would be effective; what would happen if more money was invested in culture, and how this should happen.

Mikhail Kazinik’s speech can be called educational (they didn’t understand the importance of the topic - they realized it), but it cannot be called selling (they understood the value of investing money and invested).

Nevertheless, the importance of this speech for society, in my opinion, cannot be overestimated. As they say, repeat your plan, and sooner or later it will reach the majority.

Mikhail Kazinik himself said this in one of his interviews: “What’s important to me is not the immediate effect, but the knowledge that even one meeting can reprogram a person, make him reconsider his views on life values. The goal is obvious - to try here, as in all other places, to explode the atmosphere of no school, no training, no education, absolute movement to nowhere. Of course, this is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future, but I am convinced that the future belongs to my school. We just need to talk about it more often.”

Mikhail Kazinik, art critic and educator, devoted his entire life to serving art. He talks simply and clearly about music, literature, and painting. He easily translates a theory that is far from reality into something simple, urgent and interesting.

About education

Schools need to change all over the world. Children don’t want to go to school, parents shout: “It’s not safe there!”

Children need to develop a different way of thinking, faith in their own strength. Don't force your child to study music, but help them discover their creative potential.

About the 21st century

If the next saving era of the Renaissance does not come in the 21st century, then it is absolutely true that an era of obscurantism will come in its place.

About geniuses

Humanity feeds and develops only on the creations of the spirit left by great composers, writers, and poets. This is civilization, this is true peace. Today the whole world has gone crazy with its idea of ​​equality of opportunity, gender, and intelligence.

If all people are geniuses, then what is your potential? A person who does not have a different way of thinking, does not have the ease of generating ideas, and the ability to abandon an idea as soon as it is compromised will never become a genius.

About Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and school grades

What point system should be used to evaluate the brilliant works of Chekhov and Turgenev?

When Tchaikovsky taught at the conservatory, he was so kind that he gave A's to everyone - the unlucky, weak and strong students. Since he was melancholic, he immediately began to cry if he had to give a bad grade.

One day, a tall young man approached him and excitedly handed over the notes, introducing himself as Rachmaninoff. Tchaikovsky began to play the notes and suddenly began to cry. Everyone was confused. It turned out that he was upset because if no one can be given higher than an A, then this brilliant boy is the same as everyone else?

After this incident, Tchaikovsky introduced a new rating system. He drew a five, put a plus on the left, top, bottom on the right, and it turned out to be a nine-point rating system. He was very pleased!

About the gastronomic approach to art

Classics are the text of civilization. If there is a secret of geniuses who created outstanding creations, then there must also be a secret of geniuses of perception. From this it is clear that not everyone can understand genius.

How long does the average person spend in a museum near a painting? 4–5 seconds. The artist put so much effort into this painting that people would pass by... by... without even understanding the idea?

All painting does not so much depict as express. For example, you can hear the following conversation near a painting of an apple painted by a Dutch artist in the style of realism: “I would eat it (exactly a gastronomic approach to fine art), but Flemish apples are different, I won’t eat these!”

You need to look at paintings by artists for a long time, look in detail, and then a completely different world will open up before you!

About love

Love is the greatest energy in the world. All great music ever written by man is love, all great poetry is also love. After all, God created people with love!

Mikhail Semyonovich Kazinik - Scientific director of the Eurasian Center for Prospective Sociocultural Design of the Moscow Educational and Cultural Cluster, member of the Committee on International Humanitarian Cooperation of the EOEC, art historian and educator, author and presenter of original music and art history programs, popularizer of classical music, music expert of the Nobel Concert, guest professor at Stockholm Institute of Drama, honorary member of the European Slavic Academy of Literature and Art of Bulgaria, Honorary Doctor of RISEBA (Riga International Higher School of Economics), professor of the open department of MPEI, holder of the Order of “Service to Art” for his contribution to strengthening international humanitarian cooperation.

Governing Council of the Moscow Educational and Cultural Cluster

Moscow, February 28, 2018.— Minister of Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation Nikolai Nikiforov spoke at the 430th meeting of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation as part of the Government Hour on the issue “On current issues in the development of communications and information technology in the context of the formation of a digital economy in the Russian Federation.” Here is the text of his speech.

"Dear Colleagues!

What is the already approved “Digital Economy” program, what goals is it aimed at achieving? Most importantly, it is aimed at creating a favorable legal environment for the use of digital technologies in the economy, increasing competencies in the field of digital technologies of Russian enterprises, and developing data processing infrastructure. The entire digital economy is about how we collect, process and transmit data. This is to ensure our cyber resilience. We all understand the importance of this in our geopolitical situation. And, of course, this is the development of human capital. In fact, all aspects, in one way or another, are connected with humans, with our leading specialists who create and develop these technologies.

The program provides for the development and implementation of a number of digital national platforms to support research activities and connect educational and healthcare institutions that are not connected or connected at an insufficiently high speed to the Internet. Implementation of the program will require close interaction between the state, business and science.

The main goal is to create ten national leading companies - our national champions, which will benefit the digitalization of the Russian economy and take their rightful place in the global market. This is exactly what you need to focus on.

I will dwell in more detail on what has already been done in the field of communications and information technology. These are the traditional issues that we discuss with you during government hours and during working meetings, as part of our work in the regions.

Our most important achievement from the point of view of the digital economy is the creation and operation of significant market players. These are Yandex and Mail.ru, the manufacturer of marine simulators and electronic navigation systems Transas, the electronic classifieds platform Avito, the social network VKontakte, the company producing digital security solutions Kaspersky Lab and many others. . This was done, among other things, thanks to our academic fundamental educational heritage and meaningful policy in the field of new technologies.

Competent regulation of the communications industry has led to Russia having one of the lowest prices for communications and the Internet in the world. Despite the fact that the territory of our country requires huge investments, which no other state in the world faces. The fourth generation LTE communication technology is available in the territory where 70% of our citizens live. Over the reporting five years, the number of users in the country increased from 46% to 75%. About 70 million of our fellow citizens constantly carry one or another mobile device with them and use them online to organize their daily work. And this is the driver of digitalization of a number of industries.

We have always paid great attention to the project to eliminate the digital divide. This issue has always been relevant for the Russian Federation. I would like to report that during the reporting period we managed to lay about 46 thousand km of fiber-optic lines, which reached 5.6 thousand settlements. And this work continues at full speed. These are settlements where communications simply would not have arrived without the appropriate amendments to the federal law “On Communications.” And today there is a fully developed environment for the further construction of that same digital economy. Let me remind you about the key projects that were implemented in the Far East: these are underwater communication lines along the bottom of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk Sakhalin - Magadan - Kamchatka, a project in Yakutia, where the problem of connecting populated areas was particularly acute. In 2017, the real event was the connection of Norilsk - a city with a population of 180 thousand people, where almost 2% of GDP is created, all these years did not have a landline communication line. It was a real holiday, the whole city took to the streets and celebrated the fact that there is now no digital inequality, and there is high-speed, inexpensive Internet access compared to the satellite communications that existed before.

We will continue to implement the project to connect small settlements. Fortunately, we managed to resolve the issue with the financial block of the Government, and the withdrawal of targeted funds from the universal communication service fund is no longer taking place. All these funds are used today to solve the problem provided for by federal law. Work to connect healthcare institutions to high-speed communication channels is in full swing. Let me remind you that the President of our country set this task for the Government in his annual message on December 1, 2016. This year we will complete this work.

In 2017, we connected more than three thousand medical institutions. About ten thousand will be connected in 2018. This work takes place locally. It must be remembered that in populated areas where high-speed communication comes, people live and other organizations are present, and not just a hospital, which will benefit from the use of telemedicine and the most modern medical information technologies. The Internet will come to homes, local governments, schools, libraries, cultural institutions, and so on.

Electronic government services are actively developing. 65 million of our citizens are registered on the Unified Government Services Portal. Confidence in the digital environment itself, in the electronic way of interaction between citizens and businesses with the state, is increasing. As a striking project, I would like to mention the electronic absentee ballot in the context of the upcoming voting in the presidential elections on March 18, 2018. Now you can get an absentee certificate using the government services portal. About a million citizens used the service of choosing a polling station. This suggests that digital transformation is coming even to such conservative politically sensitive topics as the organization of elections.

What needs to be done now for digital transformation to truly create the conditions for accelerating economic growth in Russia? We have to remove the remaining barriers from a legislative point of view. This is our joint work.

In the priority activities approved under the Digital Economy program, the section on improving the regulatory framework already includes the preparation of potential amendments to about 50 laws. They are grouped into ten thematic sections.

We have to step up our work on import substitution and personnel training. There is a serious concern here that the number of IT specialists, not only those who program and write software code, but in general, who introduce modern digital technologies into the work of industries and enterprises, is underestimated. In the sense that we are preparing few such specialists, and we need to increase the target numbers for admission to universities, pay attention to issues of professional training, including revising the school education program.

Competition in the Russian economy and in the global market is, in a sense, a sport of high achievement. If an enterprise becomes 1-2% more competitive, this can change the balance in established traditional markets. And such competition for these few percent becomes possible precisely thanks to the use of digital technologies. Because traditional approaches have, to some extent, already been exhausted.

The Digital Economy program is not a program about how to spend taxpayers’ money and increase budget expenditures. It is largely about creating conditions and, among other things, attracting private investment. One of the important issues that is also under consideration is the issue of public-private partnership, involving the concession mechanism in the use and development of information systems.

We also shouldn’t forget that the digital economy is not only about communications, programming, and informatization. It affects a wide range of industries: education, healthcare, trade, finance. No industry can stay away. In this context, I would like to touch upon the current situation in the development of postal services, because the digitalization of the economy is changing the traditional role of national postal operators in the life of the country. If earlier “Russian Post” was perceived primarily as a structure that delivers paper letters, today it is a commodity distribution network. Over the past five years, the number of international parcels processed daily has changed dramatically. Previously, about 80 thousand international parcels were processed per day, today this is more than a million parcels. And this number will increase. It would be realistic to estimate it at two million parcels a day, at three. The share of e-commerce will increase in relation to our traditional turnover, including in traditional retail chains. But we must use these opportunities not only to accept parcels from abroad, but to provide an adequate export flow and create conditions in terms of taxation, customs regulation, other forms of export stimulation and support for small businesses in order to use these opportunities.

Technological changes are happening very quickly. I have already given an example about the change in the number of Internet users. We need to realize this and create conditions so that our enterprises, our economy, including the quality of life of citizens, benefit from the new challenges that the technological revolution poses to us.

We believe that from the point of view of cooperation with legislators and relevant committees, very interesting work lies ahead. And, of course, we are grateful to the political support that the Digital Economy program has today at the level of the President of our country, at the level of the Prime Minister, who are directly involved in the daily, monthly agenda for the implementation of this program.”