[Vladimir]

LCR, then, that writes "Kommersant" about Avdeeva:

Alexander Avdeev three became deputy foreign minister - from 1991 to 1992, yet the Soviet Union from 1996 to 1998 - Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, and from 1998 to 2002 - First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia. In the last post, Mr. Avdeev earned quite a mixed reputation - in diplomatic circles he is considered the principal conductor of a rigid "isolationist" attitude toward the West, advocates of so-called "genshtabovskogo Ministry of Foreign Affairs - the department of international military cooperation, the Defense Ministry, headed by General Leonid Ivashov. Alexander Avdeev a while even others in foreign affairs, but the dispute "Westerners" and "isolationists" The Kremlin took the side of the first, and Mr. Avdeev, apparently amounting to very strong opposition to Minister Ivanov has been appointed Russia's ambassador to France. From this point on he hit the ministers of culture.

If the Foreign Ministry was rumored that Alexander Avdeev "bumped into orthodoxy and jingoism," then all the cultural leaders, to communicate with him in France as a mark of his "Europeanism" and open-mindedness. Andrei Erofeev, head of the newest trends of the Tretyakov Gallery, speaks about Mr. Avdeev as a real "Europeans": "This person is sufficiently knowledgeable in the culture, the broad liberal views. Mr. Erofeev contact with Russia's ambassador to France at the organization which became due after the ex-minister Alexander Sokolov scandalous exhibition Sots Art "in Paris and believes that the new minister" is much closer to modern culture, than its predecessor. He did not object, according to Andrei Erofeev, that in Russia the embassy hanged now known soc-artist Erik Bulatov.

About the new Minister of liberalism can witness the episode, narrated by a French writer Marek Halter and widespread Russia's news agencies. In 1984, Mr. Halter held in Paris on the walls of the Soviet embassy rally for the release from exile of academician Andrei Sakharov: "We Rostropovich, Yves Montand, Catherine Deneuve, Marcello Mastroianni, and others would like to have received the ambassador. The rally lasted all night: we were singing , Rostropovich played the cello ... " As a result, the embassy took them, as it turned out, Alexander Avdeev. According to Halter, M. Avdeev often tells the story: "As he looked out the window and then thought about how he would prefer to be with us and listen to a cello, not sit locked up in the embassy."

It seems that the new minister in advance to please everyone. Film director Nikita Mikhalkov, crediting him with "return to their homeland dust Denikin, Shmelev and Ilyina, a filmmaker Pavel Lungin simply says" a charming man with a broad outlook. " His opinion was joined and Tusi Chogovadze, director of the Moscow International Salon of Fine Arts Mission: "This is a beautifully educated, who has established all the contacts to their charm. In France, it is love! In 2010 declared the Year of Russian Culture Year in France and French culture - in Russia . It will be a chance for a new minister of culture manifest itself in all his glory.

Appointment of Alexander Avdeev welcome and representatives of the Church - Archbishop Innocent, the head of the Korsun diocese of the Moscow Patriarchate, which unites Russian Orthodox parishes in France, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal, said that the embassy when Alexander Avdeev, helped solve the problem of Russian Orthodox diaspora. " Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky called Alexander Avdeev "highly cultured man."

Meanwhile, the appointment of Alexander Avdeev breaks an established tradition in the post-Soviet era, when people became ministers of culture with professional cultural backgrounds. The first in this cultural-ministerial chain became an actor and director Nikolai Gubenko, followed by the writer Yevgeny Sidorov, then muzeyschitsa Natalia Dementieva, then briefly Minister spent a librarian, director Leninki Vladimir Yegorov, after it became a minister in drama, Mikhail Shvydkoi.

But as experience proves sent yesterday to the resignation of the minister-musician Sokolova - be the figure of a culture does not mean it has to be able to lead. Ex-minister will go down in history curious remarks about contemporary art and craft "of honor and dignity" with the same cultural people - Tretyakov and Mikhail Shvydkoi.

After such a minister is quite understandable desire to appoint a person from the culture.