1. It is not by pure chance that the meeting devoted to opposing intolerance is taking place in Sweden. As far back as 1922 Sweden and Finland, having the League of Nations as a mediator, signed the Aland agreement, thus resolving their long territorial dispute. It was Sweden (maybe for the first time in history) who refrained from settling the problem by force and in 1919 put the problem of the Aland islands on international discussion. Today the Alands is a prospering autonomy, where the level of life is quite high, where 97 percent of population are citizens of Finland although 95 percent of these people speak Swedish.

2. The tragedy of the Jewish people in the 20-th century (as well as the tragedy of other peoples) was the culmination of the negative experience of mankind, which was used to apply force when solving territorial, economic, social, political and other problems.

3. Having realized that violence resource in problem and conflict solving is unproductive and has, in fact, been exhausted, the world community has taken to a conceptually different approach which was already tested with the Alands, that is COMING TO AN AGREEMENT, resolving contradictions by means of negotiations.
In this way the General Declaration, Pacts on Human Rights and other documents came to life, and a very special place among them is occupied by the UNESCO Declaration of Principles of Tolerance (1995). These documents reflect not only the strive of world community to refrain from violence in its various manifestations, but also the attempt to fix a foothold, to develop a system of value coordinates for the sake of peaceful development in a multicultural world. After all, most of world communities are not only multinational but also quite variable in their subcultures, whereas the ideas of cultural separateness or "melting caldron" (USA) have proved to be leading to a dead-end.

4. The point of the transition period, in which Russia, objectively, finds itself nowadays, may – in the broadest sense of the word – be defined as the transition from various types of "mono" to a variety, the transition from "the community of Soviet people" to a community in a pluralistic society. The first decade of reforms was characterized by setting free initiatives of each particular person and society as a whole. At this stage it was very important for people to realize their own rights and freedoms and to unite on the basis of similar views and goals. Presently, when public initiative has already been awakened, not only the natural need of freedom is important but, all the more so, the ability to enjoy it. OSI believes that along with maintaining and protecting rights and freedoms it is socially significant to develop tolerance, the ability of getting along and preserving relationships with people different from you in this or that way. It is necessary to realize on the personal, public and state level that tolerance is the condition for further development of pluralism and, on this grounds, of civil society and legal state.

5. Our program is focused on educational and enlightenment tasks for a number of reasons: taking into consideration wishes and opportunities of real partners of the program; taking into consideration the experience and materials developed by OSI during the previous years; taking into consideration that one of the most important aspects of the subject is to soften the consequences of conflicts and to maintain dialogue in hot spots.

6. Still, there is another reason, which made us choose education as a priority for our program. Unfortunately, quite often it is in the family and at school that a person gets his/her first experience of intolerance. Our modern school which may be still good at instruction in concrete content areas and in passing over scientific and scholarly knowledge, is now at a loss what to do as far as pedagogic is concerned. Such democratic values as choice, right for one’s own opinion, freedom of conscience – that is all that allows us to keep the variety of society and the world intact, have not yet been realized and owned by the Russian pedagogic. It means that the main principle of tolerance – «harmony in variety» – is still outside its professional attention. Yes, variety sometimes leads to a conflict of interests. But school is the place where we could successfully oppose the development of intolerance by means of educating, of developing conflict competence so that a person would realize that a conflict is an objective contradiction. Certainly, one can always step back and run away from a contradiction (and this may be the manifestation of patience but not of tolerance). It is also possible to react to the conflict contradiction by aggression, to try and overcome it by force, in the literal sense of the word. Neither in the first, nor in the second case the contradiction disappears, the conflict may only hide itself, go under the surface for a while, but it will eventually return, and in a more complicated form. Following the principles of tolerance it is necessary to learn to RESOLVE contradictions.
The instrument for resolving contradictions is NEGOTIATIONS, the skill of coming to an agreement, the way Sweden did in case of the Alands. The more ways a person knows to resolve a conflict which is inevitable in a multicultural socium, the more he/she is capable of tolerance, of productive interaction. In other words, tolerance is a cultural norm, grown by people, and in this capacity it opposes intolerance which is often close to the instinctive fear of another being, a stranger, who may even be an alien.

Goals of the OSI “Tolerance” Program
• Dissemination of the ideas of tolerance and technologies of nonviolent resolving of contradictions, development of legal culture.
• Support of governmental program « ON TOLERANCE AND PREVENTION OF EXTREMISM IN RUSSIAN SOCIETY (National assistance strategy to civil society)»; joining efforts of the Government, OSI and other public funds and organizations to reshape this national program into a public project.
Program Target Group
Pedagogical community, schoolchildren, parents, public bodies.
Partners of the program
The British Council, UNESCO, Ministry of Education of Russia, Regional educational administrations.

Projects:
À) Long-term projects implemented with partners:
• Resource centers for development of tolerance in Krasnoyarsk, Sochi, Nizhny Tagil, Samara, Yekaterinburg, Novorissiysk, Moscow, in the Omsk area;
• Creation of informational-analytical center in Moscow;
• «World Without Confrontation», educational program for preventing behavioural aggressiveness in schools, Krasnoyarsk;
• «We, the people», law education program in UNESCO associated schools;
• Pedagogical college of multicultural education in the town of Sochi;
• Contest of family posters in 3 nominations: «Tolerance at Home», «Tolerance helps to Make Friends», «Tolerance Helps to Avoid Violence».
Á) Local projects implemented by OSI:
• Publication and dissemination of Kon’s book «Right for Genocide»,
• Publication and dissemination of the book “Anna Frank’s Diary”,
• Mobile exhibition «Pale of Settlement – before and after»,
• «Poster» action «I Do Not Want to Hate»,
• Production of the Russian variant of the ADL poster «Holocaust»,
• Dissemination through video salons in libraries of G.Bardin’s movie «Adagio»,
• Financial support of S.Koulish’s movie «Farewell, 20 century»,
• Publication of 10000 copies of the UN Convention on Child’s Rights,
• Contest of projects «School of Tolerance» (conducted for educational establishments of the North-Caucasian region);
• Contest of projects «Siberia, the territory of consent» (directed at disseminating information about national minorities and supporting their cultural uniqueness)
• Many others.
In conclusion: in 1920 this country gave the world the experience of tolerant interaction between states. Now Sweden considers its moral debt to share the experience it has gained in tolerance education among youngsters with other countries. Sweden, as well as Russia, regards education to be a priority in the development of the culture of tolerance. We are ready for collaboration. And I am pleased to report to this high meeting that right now an agreement is being prepared on the cooperation between OSI and the embassy of Sweden for disseminating the experience Swedish teachers with the book «Tell This To Your Children» in Russian schools.