As Professor of Architectural Design of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture Larysa Skoryk said at the meeting, "all personality shaping capabilities of humanitarian policy can be used only when it becomes a strategic direction in development of the state, the catalyst, which provides our progress in the civilized world.”
"We should not forget that without the intervention of humanitarian policy, without its impact on such social life areas as economics, politics, law, international relations, etc., it is very hard to speak about actual civilized progress of the state," she said.
Larysa Skoryk expressed confidence that "Ukraine needs people with highly relevant knowledge, people who think critically, people who certainly are moral.”
In his speech at the meeting, Verkhovna Rada Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn stressed that current humanitarian challenges are very hard to overcome because this area is "terribly neglected". However, he expressed confidence that suggestions elaborated by the Public Humanitarian Council will be successfully "materialized in the form of decrees, decisions of the Cabinet, laws” and will allow conducting necessary reforms.
In addition, Volodymyr Lytvyn stressed support to the President of Ukraine in his willingness to restore Kaniv.
Participants of the meeting also discussed uniting the Ukrainian nation. They expressed their views on the importance of bringing out to a broad public discussion the topics that would unite Ukrainians. Director of the Institute of Archaeology, National Academy of Sciences Academician Petro Tolochko said that “unfortunately, up until today, rather than uniting, the history has been dividing us”. In this context, he suggested that society’s priority should be returning historical dignity to the Ukrainian people. "Through the centuries, it (the people) has not always been only a passive victim. We have enough reasons to consider it a full party to the historical process ... We must get rid of the complex of historical irresponsibility.”
In his speech, Chairman of the Ukrainian Culture Fund Borys Oliynyk said that he thinks it is "entirely reasonable to bring out the discussion of issues that unite the nation to the communities.” He also suggested establishing State Committee for Protection of the Ukrainian language. However, Borys Oliynyk said, protection and development of languages of all other peoples living in our country must be provided in Ukraine.
From his part, publicist and senior researcher at the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature Dmytro Stus said that through the history of Ukraine’s independence, no one really ever has formulated tasks or solved problems in development of spiritual and cultural capital of Ukraine that could produce enough ideas, projects and technologies to cover the whole country, not just certain regions. As a result, said Dmytro Stus, the country has split by cultural attributes and has transformed into the area deprived of mental traits.
To avoid this, Dmytro Stus suggested strengthening regional cultural centers, whose activity is aimed at studying and developing mental characteristics of regions and their inclusion in the national context. In addition, he believes that development and implementation of national projects should attract the brightest intellectuals of the state.
"It is time for us to turn to technology, because technology means restoration of resources, which we do not have many. This will buy time and prevent chaos and confusion in restoration of the destroyed cultural product distribution network. We have no choice but to bet on the Internet and virtual space. This will allow us to make the whole cultural heritage accumulated by various nations and ethnic groups who lived in Ukraine available to all people, not only to residents of large cities, and that with minimum of investment needed.
Dmytro Stus also suggested that scanty circulation cultural product will not affect the situation and we will continue to generate national level "samizdat".
"I have no doubts that new technologies should be the priority in the state concept of cultural development," said Dmytro Stus. He believes that cultural values converted into digital format will in short time allow to provide people with what they did not have for almost 20 years of independence of Ukraine – the cultural foundation upon which the transformation of culture, and therefore the state could be started.
Dmytro Stus said that currently this transformation is possible only with support “from the above."
"The state should be the supreme example to follow. We must achieve the state of affairs when being educated and cultured man who defends the interests of Ukraine, and his small homeland is fashionable and promising," he said.
