President Vladimir Putin ordered a civil solution to the problem of heirs who have gone abroad preventing the staging of works that constitute the national treasure of Russian literature. The issue came to the agenda following a call by Vladimir Mashkov, President of the Russian Union of Theatre Workers and People's Artist, at a meeting of the Culture Council.
Mashkov had asked Putin to make a regulation allowing theatre plays to be staged even without the permission of heirs who are not authors. According to Mashkov, some heirs who left Russia are banning the staging of works by famous Russian writers, depriving the people of their own national heritage.
Speaking to RIA Novosti, Mashkov said, 'Work is currently underway in this direction, and I also reported this at the Legal Forum. Our goal is not to take away the livelihoods of the heirs; it is to ensure that works written in our language, that is, in Russian, which are our national heritage, are accessible and that banning them becomes impossible in principle.'
Mashkov warned that if the situation is not regulated, the greatest works of Russian literature risk being forgotten over time. 'Banning the performance of an author's works in our country inevitably leads to the author themselves being forgotten,' he said.