Special subcommittee to promote "soft power" may be created in the Council of Federation of Russia

The head of the Federation Council International Committee Konstantin Kosachev told about this is "The Parliamentary newspaper" after a speech in the Chamber of Regions of special representative of Russian President for International Cultural Cooperation Mikhail Shvydkoi.

"Soft power" is called the process of achieving the strategic interests of the state with the help of a positive attitude to it in other countries. According to Mikhail Shvydkoi, not all Russian media, promoting the country abroad, popular with Western audiences. Director of the Center for Policy Studies, a member of the Public Chamber Sergey Markov is of the same opinion. He cited the example of Euronews TV channel, which is a shareholder in Russia. The political scientist reminded that Euronews shares in 2001 increased from 1.8 percent to 16 percent for several years.

Mikhail Shvydkoi for qualitatively improved the situation, proposed the creation of the Federation Council Commission on the problems of "soft power", the more so in the House, led by Valentina Matviyenko worked many talented diplomats.

Konstantin Kosachev reminded that the scope of international humanitarian cooperation and the so-called soft power - very inertia, and therefore the results of the work and the results of its absence is not immediately visible - sometimes it takes decades. 

The same was mentioned by Mikhail Shvydkoi, emphasizing that "soft power" of the state - is not only the development and promotion of culture, education, sports, information technology, but most importantly - the state's involvement in the solution of global external calls. Participation for example, is in the fight against terrorism in Syria. Shvydkoi called interparliamentary activities an important instrument of "soft power" and urged senators effectively use it.

How much is propaganda

Who today makes the image of Russia abroad? It is not only Rossotrudnichestvo, "The Russian World" Fund and Roszarubezhtsentr, but a number of media. For example, the Russian international multilingual news channel Russia Today. Its budget in 2016 amounted to almost 17.5 billion rubles, and by 2019 the funding under the draft budget for 2017-2019 years will be reduced to 16.06 billion rubles. This amount is inferior to the budgets of many other international broadcasters holdings. For example, the "Voice of America" ​​in 2016 from the state budget received 751.5 million dollars. British Broadcasting Corporation as the BBC, according to published data, in 2014, received a budget of almost 245 million pounds sterling, and the budget of the German Deutsche Welle to 2015-2016 - 294 million pounds. The United States of America spend for propaganda abroad in a year about 25 billion dollars in assets and $ 2 billion through government agencies. There is a special Department of Culture under the Foreign Ministry in Germany, which is the external cultural policy spends 1 billion 670 million euro. This department in Russia under the Foreign Ministry was abolished in 2004. One of the most effective organizations in the sphere of "soft power" is considered to be the British Council - an organization that works around the world with a budget of 1 billion pounds annually. There was a committee to study the influence of the world's countries with the help of "soft power" under the British Parliament in 2013, it gives recommendations to the Government, oversees how the money is spent, and achieves the efficiency of the used funds.