“The development of giant territories, with difficult living conditions, has hammered out the Russian national character and shown to the whole world our capabilities, Deputy Speaker Valery Yasin told the conference participants on Thursday. “The new century, the twenty first – is a new Road to the North”, he added, Oilru.com reports.
Yasin called on the conference delegates, most of them young people representing a wide range of various organizations, to elaborate a “new philosophy” for the Russian North, to carefully study the region and to use its natural resources in a sustainable way. He also reminded the young people present about the major emphasis put on the region by both President Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The forum, the second of its kind, was started in fall 2010 and is completed this week with conference events in Yekaterinburg. It was attended by representatives from more than 100 countries, the forum website informs. The overarching title for the forum has been “the Road to the North”. The State Duma is one of the partners of the event along with several organizations working with Eurasian affairs.
In the spirit of Aleksandr Dugin, a contemporary Russian neo-Eurasianist, the forum memorandum reads that “our eurasianism is looking for models, concepts, programs, which promotes a “New Northern Oecumene” – the crade of that civilization which nurtured the Russian empire and its allies, the USSR and the CIS”.
A follow-up event of the forum will be the Arctic Youth Summit, due late June in Arkhangelsk.
