On 4 April 2006 a press conference was held in the Hermitage Theatre devoted to the start of the Forum of Young Journalists.

The press conference was led by Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky and the General Director of the Eurasia Media Centre, General Secretary of the International Confederation of Unions of Journalists Ashot Jazoyan.

The Forum was organized by the Eurasia Media Centre, the State Hermitage with support from UNESCO, the International Confederation of Unions of Journalists (ICUJ)and the International Academy of Television and Radio.

Young journalists from the post-Soviet states gathered in the world's largest museum, where the cultural heritage of mankind is highly visible, in order to discuss the approaches and experience of the media community from different countries to a policy of tolerant coexistence of cultures and religious faiths. Modern day young people have somewhat different ideas about the world than the representatives of the generation that reached maturity during the years of the Cold War. They do not divide up mankind by some ideological principle. However, there is an alarming tendency on the worldwide level towards rekindling of attitudes of national and religious intolerance which threaten to grow into a new and more destructive form of global confrontation. This is why it is so important for there to be a dialogue among representatives of the generation which will soon become part of the national elites of our countries, including the leadership of the mass media, which are so influential in shaping society's thinking.

The venue for a forum is an important factor. St Petersburg is Russia's spiritual and cultural capital, but in recent years it figures ever more often in news dispatches about manifestations of Nazism and xenophobia. The journalists from St Petersburg who were invited to participate in the Forum were able to discuss with their colleagues the problems which are today troubling society in many countries and to learn about the experience which has been accumulated for solving tasks of relations between nationalities and ethnic groups.

The Dialogue of Cultures Forum was called upon to demonstrate to young people who are the future representatives of the mass media in Eurasia the commonality of their origins and the mutual influences of the various national cultures and world religions, as well as their inseparability and the artificiality of the confrontations. As the largest museum in the world, the State Hermitage is precisely the place where the cultural unity of mankind is especially evident, and that is why it was chosen as the venue for the Forum.

More than 100 young representatives (aged 30 and younger) from the leading mass media of Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Baltic states, and the countries of Central Asia (commentators, television and radio presenters, editors), as well as a number of well-known public personalities from St Petersburg and Moscow (sociologists, researchers in comparative cultural studies) all took part in the Forum. A greeting was sent to the Forum by UNESCO General Director Koichiro Matsuura. On the concluding day of the Forum there was the first public screening of the documentary film 36 Warriors, which relates a story based on previously unknown details from the life of Armenians and Kipchaks, who were the forefathers of the Kazakh ethnic group, and demonstrates a dialogue between Christian and Islamic civilizations. The film was made with support from the TuranAlem Bank.

Within the context of the Forum, an international competition entitled Russia: A View from the Side was held. Over the course of two or three days, our foreign colleagues were given the opportunity to prepare reports about the city on the Neva. After these reports are shown on their national television channels, they can be entered in the annual international competition, with later showing on Russian television channels.

Report prepared by the Press Service of the State Hermitage based on materials presented by the Eurasia Media Center.

At the press-conference at the Hermitage Theater

Director of the State Hermitage M.B. Piotrovsky

General Director of the Eurasia Media Centre, General Secretary of the International Confederation of Unions of Journalists Ashot Jazoyan

Adviser to the director of UNESCO Genrikh Yushkyavichus