Tolerance

The weather was very hot and we conducted our seminar on the coast of the pond in the wonderful verandah. The next surprise prepared by Nur-Elom was Excursion to Pereslavl-Zalessky with support of a wonderful guide. Ancient temples, historical places and mysterious lake Pleshcheevo gave us an unforgettable impression. In this seminar representatives of governmental authorities and law-enforcement agencies had taken a part not only from Yaroslavl region but also from Moscow, Nizhniy Novgorod, Petrozavodsk, St.-Petersburg, Smolensk, Vologda and even from the Chechen Republic.

Therefore acquaintance with local historical sights was very opportunely. And a distinctive specifity was presence of record number of police officers, also from various regions. It's very important for us because we considered that just to talk about prevention, opposition and worthy reactions concerning international conflicts without law enforcement authorities is very ineffective.

The seminar has begun with acquaintance. Ashot Ajrapetjan offered a method of division into teams. He asked our German volunteers – Katerina and Thomas – to give each participant a piece of paper with number – to men and women from different nations. Teams were chaotically and it was very amusing. After this participants told each other about themselves. Then participants have with the great pleasure told about each other. Everybody of participants answered the question - what is the reason for occurrence of interethnic conflicts, which worsen image of Russia.

The results were significant. If there are so many different reasons it's impossible to foresee which of these reasons would be foundation of conflicts. Therefore the participants discussed this theme about prevention of conflict situations.

Also we discussed how different state and public institutes have to behave oneself in occurrence of preconflict situations.

Many recommendations from the side of participants were originated. These recommendations are to find on homepage of Center for Interethnic Cooperation: http://www.interethnic.org/News/270808_1.html

In our opinion, many of these points mentioned recommendations are absolutely realistic. And these points should be realized. Level of xenophobia in our state increases more and more. And without conducting of active policy for tolerance and minimization of international conflicts, the situation can get out of control. But multinational federal state can't allow this incident.

Maria Kopelyan