What Lukashenko asked new Culture Minister and what tasks set for him
President of Belarus Aleksandr Lukashenko has made a number of personnel decisions today. The Head of State, in particular, appointed Ruslan Chernetsky, a member of the Standing Commission on Education, Culture and Science of the House of Representatives, new Minister of Culture.
Addressing Ruslan Chernetsky, the Head of State noted that his appointment was very significant, especially since the new minister has ‘a good feel for culture’, boasting concerts and cinema experience under his belt, “The only question is: will you be able to manage all this? We will, of course, make sure you have a person you can count on and who has already done this in their life before. But the hardest thing about this job – as I realise in all my years, since I had to deal with cultural workers more than once – is that they are so different people… They are so talented, capable and very ambitious… It’s probably close to you too, and you’ll deal with it. I always feel sorry for the culture minister in the sense that he has to withstand such an onslaught.”
The Belarusian leader sincerely admitted that at the very beginning of his Presidential activity he was getting into all the problems of every cultural worker and tried to figure everything out, “Then I realised: if I only deal with the problems of these people, I won’t have enough time for everything else. Moreover: you do a good job today, everyone is happy, but the next day some group zealously opposes what you have done. In general, there was a lot of chaos. I realised then that this environment is too competitive, I can see it in Russia, there is very fierce competition there. But we have to compete. Whoever is more talented is the one at the top, whoever can’t withstand this competition — they chose this road themselves…”
