In late June 2010, the Russkiy Mir Foundation celebrated the third anniversary of the signing of the presidential decree that established the organization. In honor of this occasion, Executive Director of the Foundation Vyacheslav Nikonov sat down to talk with Русский мир.ru about the organization’s accomplishments to date and vision for the future.

– What in your opinion are the main accomplishments of the Foundation over the first three years of its work?

– The Foundation is functioning and it is functioning quite efficiently. This is one of the most important achievements. We have resolved the difficult problems that appeared at the very beginning with regard to the legal groundwork for the functioning of the Foundation and the provision of grants, which Russian legislation largely treats as a foreign phenomenon. We are a grant providing organization, and it turns out the most of the grant recipients are compatriots abroad. So we had to resolve a number of rather complex and difficult legal and procedural issues.

We have achieved good working relations with partners and a general ideology for the Foundation’s activities has been formulated. We have come to understand, at least more clearly than at the start, what Russkiy Mir is, where it is and what is of interest to this community. We have begun to create Russian Centers abroad. We recently opened our 55th center, which is located at Groningen University in Holland, one of the oldest educational institutions in that country. During the past year we launched the Russkiy Mir Cabinet program, which are essentially simplified versions of Russian Centers that can be created rather quickly anywhere in the world.

The Foundation also began implementing the Russkiy Mir Professor Program, which sends Russian language teachers to locations where they are in great deficit, helping satisfy the demand for Russian language instruction at universities abroad.

In terms of expanding our presence on the Internet, the main achievement of this year is the launch of a social network, which is currently functioning under a test regime and could possible grow into a global network.

It is important that we have stirred the souls of a large number of people in many countries throughout the world. And this enormous Russkiy Mir has become much larger than it was one or two years ago and is interested in the Foundation. Russkiy Mir looks at our Foundation and sees an opportunity to find real support, to partner with us in the organization of major international projects.

The number of people in the world who are beginning to study the Russian language and who speak Russian is increasing. This growth is a striking turnaround from what we saw in the 1990s. We are known throughout the world. This in part is due to our website and journal. It is widely recognized that Русский мир.ru is becoming more interesting and noteworthy.

We receive a wide variety of commentary, sometimes quite critical but often positive and even complimentary. Regardless, we are receiving more and more attention, both from mass media and from foreign special services. But we view this calmly and have grown accustomed to it.

–Which projects of the Foundation would you highlight in particular?

– This year stands out as the 65th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War. Our Memory of the Heart campaign brought together thousands of people throughout the world, and through their participation we created a functioning memorial archive that combines both memories and artifacts from the Great Patriotic War that have been preserved by the families of Russkiy Mir compatriots throughout the entire planet.

We have made a substantial contribution to Russian foreign policy expertise, although this is not the top priority of our organization. However, through the support of expert dialog with a rather large number of countries, we also help support and facilitate cultural dialog.

–If we look back three years… Did you imagine that it would turn out like this? And what is your vision of the Foundation, let’s say, five years or a decade from now?

It’s difficult to say. Even two years ago I did not imagine that [the Foundation] would attain such a wide reach. Our achievements have surpassed expectations. The development dynamic is quite positive, but everything will depend on our work, on our ingenuity, on our creativity. It would be incorrect to say that everything depends on our budget. There are, for example, some projects that require modest or no financial support but nonetheless produce very remarkable results. Much depends on how we put our brains to work, how inventive we can be and what we can offer. We must look to the future and give it some thought.

And there are plenty of new issues arising. For example, what language will be spoken at [the innovative center] Skolkov? It would probably be inappropriate for English to be the lingua franca. So we will need to make an effort to see that Russian language – at least in our country – remains the language of innovation. This seems like an interesting issue. I think that the creation of Russian Centers in Lucerne (where the collider is located), the Silicon Valley and Skolovo would be a worthy contribution of the Foundation.

Next year we will have the motto “First in Space.” The Russian language was the first language to be spoken in outer space, and with the upcoming 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight this will be a good reason to develop a global campaign.

– What can you say about the Foundation’s budget? The State Duma recently approved a 50% increase in financing for the Foundation…

– At the World Compatriots Conference on December 1, 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev gave a positive assessment of the work of the Russkiy Mir Foundation and announced his intention to increase the financing of our organization. And we can say with gratitude that the president has kept his word. Financing has been increased, and this provides new opportunities for us. This allows us to look to the future with confidence and propose bold projects, and even more so now that several windows of opportunity have arisen as well as ideas on how to implement these projects. One of the most significant new opportunities is in Ukraine, where under President Yushchenko we were practically unable to function. Right now, of course, the situation with Russian-Ukrainian relations is changing.

I would point out another development. Over the past year the Foundation has visibly increased its cooperation with religious confessions. And I find this to be very important. An agreement has been signed with the Russian Orthodox Church, and through this agreement we have already been able to accomplish a lot. We also financed the publication of an electronic version of the Koran in Russian poetically translated by Valeria Iman Prokhorova. In the future we intend to continue cooperation with all of the traditional religions of Russia.

– Can you make any other revelations?

– Not for now. We will continue our work, and people will find out about our new projects as we begin to launch and implement them.