There's a systematic crisis in Russia, according to a news story in The Sunday Herald. The crisis is no one is reading anymore in that country, or at least not as much as they used to. From the story, "The Kremlin is now complaining that post-communist Russia has dramatically turned its back on books in favour of trashy reality-TV shows and glossy magazines."
Some factoids:
- In the 1970s, 80% of parents read aloud to their children. Today the figure is just 7%.
- In 1991, the year the Soviet Union imploded, 48% of young Russians systematically consumed literature. By 2005 that figure had shrunk to just 28%.
- In 1991, 79% of Russians read at least one book a year. In 2005 that figure had fallen to 63%.
Of course this isn't a particular problem to Russians. None of us are reading like we used to. It's because of the internet, cable TV, movies, radio, and all the other ways we get information and entertainment.
What can be done to stop the crisis? If you're the Kremlin, you've declared the next 12 months to be "The Year of Reading" in an attempt to raise awareness to the problem and get Russians to start poking their heads in bookstores again.
What can you do? Why not read some classic Russian literature?
In the New Yorker recently, there was an in-depth article, written by James Wood, about a new translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace. For me though, I'd rather dig into Dostoevksy's The Idiot.
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