An Expert Council for socio-political and ethno-confessional affairs has been organised under KFU.

Today, on the 15th of April, an organisational meeting of the Expert Council for socio-political and ethno-confessional affairs of KFU was held in the Museum of History of Kazan University.

The Expert Council will work in four spheres: socio-political, national and confessional – Islamic and Orthodox. Task groups will include representatives of scientific and expert community specializing in socio-economic development, national state policy implementation, confessional relations status.

Vice-Rector of KFU for Education, Mr. Riyaz Minzaripov, mentioned the following objectives of the Expert Council in his welcoming speech: maintenance of required level of understanding between representatives of different ethnic and confessional groups; prevention of negative trends in socio-political sphere of life of Tatarstan population; elaboration of a uniform concept of interaction between experts and leaders of our region; mapping out ways of social relations harmonisation.

The decision to create the Expert Council was influenced by several factors, most important of them being: lately growing quantity of pseudoscientific publications on socio-political and ethno-confessional problems; unconfirmed facts able to worsen interethnic and inter-confessional relations in the Republic, which are widely covered in mass media.

Thus a paper on interethnic strain growth, published under the title “Bunches of Wrath” one of these days, has given rise to many questions with Expert Council representatives. Study of interethnic strain degree in regions of Russia was conducted by officers of National Conflict Study Centre (CINK) and Russian information agency “Club Regionov” within the period from September, 2013 to March, 2014. In researchers’ judgment, Tatarstan along with Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Dagestan and Stavropolskiy region are in the so-called risk zone, situation in which is characterized by extreme instability.

Deputy Head of Administration of the President of Tatarstan, Mr. Alexander Terentyev, mentioned in his speech that Tatarstan must not be considered a region subjected to interethnic strain. Latest figures show that our Republic has been attracting more and more investors year by year. It’s important to note that we steadily occupy the forth position by social standard of living, yielding to Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and Moskovskaya district only.

According to Mr. Terentyev, such factors as uncontrolled migration, absence of clear national policy and culture of interethnic communication are not applicable to Tatarstan reality, as well. Furthermore, drafts of programs for preservation, study and development of state and other languages in the RT and programs for implementation of the Tatar people’s ethnic identity preservation concept are under elaboration now.

Participants of the meeting were also presented a report “Socio-political, inter-confessional and interethnic situation in the Republic of Tatarstan (based on materials of social studies 2013)”, which confirmed the words of Mr. Alexander Terentyev. The study has been conducted in three fields: determination of a degree of Tatarstan population satisfaction with the current situation, interethnic relations and inter-confessional relations status.

At the end of the meeting the chairman of Patriotic Organisations Council (Moscow), Mr. Alexander Mikhaylov, was given the floor. He confirmed that an interethnic situation in the region was stable as a whole. He also drew participants’ attention to reasons for federal mass media’s interest in publishing materials about situation in the Republic of Tatarstan. According to Mr. Mikhaylov, creation of the Expert Council for socio-political and ethno-confessional affairs was a good solution, which would permit to stop a negative trend observed lately in the informational space. The latter, in its turn, would decrease social strain.