Russian President Vladimir Putin provided a succinct account of what sovereignty of a country means, in such a way that it also most naturally cooperates with other sovereign countries. After his keynote address to the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) meeting in Vladivostok on Sept. 12, he fielded numerous questions posed by EEF moderator Ilya Doronov, also a managing director of the RBC TV channel, about the future of the Far East and Russia over the next decade. Putin was profound and to be the point:
“We are the makers of our future…. Scientists engage in R&D. Industrialists work in the sphere of material production, agriculture, in the industrial sector, etc. Cultural figures create images to preserve our values, which shape the inner life of every person and each citizen of Russia. All of this taken together will certainly yield a result.”
That is, scientific ideas drive R&D. That gets realized in production, the actual transformation of nature. And artists do something similar with the inner life — that is, what Friedrich Schiller famously described as the “aesthetic education” of mankind. Putin continued:
