Meeting of the Russian Geographical Society Board of Trustees

Vladimir Putin chaired the tenth anniversary meeting of the Russian Geographical Society Board of Trustees at RGO headquarters in St. Petersburg on April 27, 2018.

The meeting participants finalised the results of the society’s work over the past year and presented this year’s best projects.

Vladimir Putin said: “We are meeting again at the historical RGO headquarters. This beautiful building is almost 110 years old and for all these years it has been faithfully serving the causes of raising awareness, nature preservation, development of education, culture and local studies.

It is good to know that these traditions continue. This place brings together passionate people pursuing certain goals and creates brilliant and popular projects in various areas. I would like to thank everybody who helps to fulfil RGO’s initiatives. It is you who can take credit for its success over the past years.

Of course, the Concept of Geographical Education developed by the RGS deserves special mention. Experts and teachers were talking about the need for this and now it is fully ready. I hope it will be endorsed by the Ministry of Education and Science very soon.

I consider the RGS initiative to name new streets in Russian cities after our great geographers and travellers to be important.

In general, toponymics – names of geographical and other places – require special attention. Today we are facing attempts to gradually remove from the world map Russian names given by our explorers and travellers in past centuries and decades. Let me emphasise that this erases the memory of Russia’s contribution to the exploration of the planet and developments in science.

All this is the result, among other things, of the lack of modern domestically made maps. Only foreign ones are in the public domain, and they generally provide secondary names of geographical sites. As such, it is proposed to develop a new Russian Atlas of the World involving the Russian Geographical Society, so that all such cases will be addressed properly.

We do not intend to impose anything on anyone, it is not necessary, but we do not have the right to condone or ignore the distortion of historical and geographical truth and justice in this case.

I would ask Rosreestr (Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography) to develop the atlas together with the Russian Geographical Society and the Defence Ministry, which – provided all necessary procedures are followed – should provide access to its cartographic materials for the atlas developers and for travellers, tourists and motorists, including via modern computer technologies. The classification label on many maps is clearly outdated and looks simply archaic.

Our goal is to preserve what was done by our predecessors, and of course, to add new names and new amazing events to the annals of the Russian Geographical Society. I would like to take this opportunity to announce the start of the competition for the third Russian Geographical Society Award”.