Mr Putin said that history should not be politicised. He stressed that Russian history was no longer presented from the viewpoint of one party and one ideology, and that was good. The President, however, warned against the opposite extreme. Current school and university text books should not be boxing rings for current political and ideological fights. He said that text books should instil pride of their country and its history in young people.
Mr Putin also spoke about taking care of archaeological treasures and historical monuments. He approved the initiative for developing student archaeological teams and even promised to take part in excavations.
He promised to support the Society for the Preservation of Monuments, although he refused to become its honorary president.
Taking part in the meeting were Anatoly Kirpichnikov, the head of the Slavic and Finnish Archaeology Department at the Institute of Material Cultural History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and supervisor of the Staraya Ladoga archaeological expedition; Andrei Sakharov, director of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences; writer Vladimir Solovyev, professor at the State Pushkin Institute of the Russian Language; and Alexander Chubaryan, fellow of the Russian Academy of Sciences and director of its Institute of General History.