Maxim Lubyanoy: "The mission isn't about numbers but about recognizing one's place in the country and in history."

      14 August 2025 17:23

      [137]

      Society

      Maxim Lubyany, director of the Research Institute for Problems of Social Governance, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences:

      "The mission of a city, as the history of Nizhny Novgorod shows, is most often defined post factum, so to speak, by the results of its activity. However, it now seems necessary to try to define it, and even to formalize it at the highest regional level in the form of some document like a 'roadmap'. To know where, why and at what pace to move.

      'To be, not to seem', 'Nizhny — 100-percent Russia', 'Capital of Sunsets', 'A City You Want to Live In' — beautiful slogans, but not directions of movement.

      One might object that there is a Development Strategy and it could be considered such a document. But there the main target parameters are, naturally, economic and social goals that need to be achieved by a certain time. This is very important, but it has nothing to do with the question under discussion. Mission is not in numbers, but in the awareness of one's place in the country and in history.

      Understanding where we are heading, how we differ from other regional centers and million-plus cities, how all this fits into the overall picture of the world and the individual opinion of each resident — that, in my opinion, should be in this document. The development of an IT cluster, domestic event, industrial or educational tourism, cable cars and even transport and administrative agglomerations are tools that allow us to move closer to defining the future mission. Which one? So far no one knows."

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