Cultural Identity Is Stronger Than Algorithms: Russia Looks to Tradition in the Age of AI

Russia occupies a unique position in this context. It is a country that could experience a cultural renaissance by reexamining its traditional values. This was the subject of a visionary lecture by Marina Mongush, president of ANO Creative Economy, at the 2nd Global Digital Forum in Moscow.

The speaker opened with an idea that may sound simple at first but challenges the conventional logic of the global market: “There are no good or bad values. There are different cultural codes, and success comes to those who know how to read them.”

For example, an animated film whose protagonist is a loner who rejects family ties might become a hit in the United States, where individualism and the American Dream are deeply ingrained. But the same film could be doomed to fail in India, where family is the foremost value. Sociological data is publicly available, and any content creator can study it. The question is whether creators are willing to respect another culture’s code rather than impose their own.

“We’re not talking about propaganda or a confrontation between ‘traditional’ and ‘liberal’ values. We’re talking about something deeper: the world is beautiful because of its diversity, and a creator’s job is not to barge into someone else’s house and impose their own rules, but to develop products that align with the audience’s values,” Mongush stressed.

This idea underpins the entire lecture. Respect for cultural codes is key to success in the creative economy, and Russia, a country with one of the world’s richest and most layered civilizations, has much to offer the global market.

Russian law recognizes 16 categories of creative industries, including film, animation, music, video games, publishing, advertising, media, fashion, eight types of design, architecture, urban planning, performing arts, the art industry, software, gastronomy, cultural heritage, and leisure and entertainment.

The defining feature that unites these industries is an original creative work. Unlike extractive industries or assembly-line manufacturing, the creative sector generates revenue from intellectual property. Architects, musicians and web designers who sell their work to clients are all part of the creative economy, Marina Mongush emphasized.

“We can create a product out of nothing while sitting in a village in Siberia. Krasnoyarsk, an industrial city, has gained RUB 156 billion in new revenue from the creative sector [about $1.8 billion – ed.note]. People no longer need to move to Moscow to realize their potential,” she said.

In essence, this is a formula for decentralizing the economy through creativity. For Russia, with its vast territory and uneven regional development, it has strategic significance.

The central part of the lecture addressed perhaps the most unsettling question of our time: will artificial intelligence replace humans? Marina Mongush answered it with a historical analogy that proves surprisingly apt:

“Think of Gutenberg’s printing press. In the 15th century, the whole world was shaken. People said the Apocalypse had arrived: knowledge would no longer be sacred, and every peasant would be able to read a book. The world really did change, but it did not die. It evolved: the economy, education and geopolitics all changed.”

The expert admitted that she is a very poor photographer and that if you put a camera in her hands, nothing good would come of it. “Artificial intelligence is exactly the same kind of tool. Everything depends on who operates it, their creative abilities, their ethics and their values,” Mongush stressed.

This is a central point of the entire lecture. The creative industries are anthropocentric by nature. Without a person to formulate a prompt, give it meaning and take responsibility for the result, technology remains empty code. No creator to write the prompt means nothing gets created.

That is why Mongush considers developing creativity as a skill an absolutely critical task: “The kind of world we will live in depends on how deeply creative our children become, how broad their thinking is, and how much intelligence and understanding of values they develop.”

Russia’s place in the global creative economy, however, has yet to be fully defined. For many years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country was primarily a consumer of other countries’ cultural products. Russians consumed just about everything that came their way, from European-style apartment remodeling and architecture to design, TV series, animated films and popular music.

In Mongush’s assessment, the turning point came only recently. Sanctions pressure has paradoxically become a catalyst for domestic growth: the design industry and film sector have expanded significantly, and Russia has begun to recognize that it can be a producer of cultural products rather than merely a consumer.

“I believe that a renaissance could happen now, for us Russians, but not just for us – for all countries,” Mongush said. “A renaissance rooted in an understanding of our own values, expressed through the 16 creative industries.”

The expert sees Russia’s multinational and multifaith cultural identity as a distinctive national advantage. She speaks about it in deeply personal and affectionate terms:

“My grandfather was Estonian, my grandmother was Latvian, my other grandfather was Jewish, and my other grandmother was Russian. I was born in Siberia, and my husband is Asian. But we are all Russian because we lived in the post-Soviet space. I was educated in the Soviet school system, which gave me a fantastic education. And yet we still manage to celebrate the holidays of every tradition. To us, it is perfectly normal to have a lama, a shaman and an Orthodox priest sitting at the same table because there is a wedding or a memorial gathering. A Buryat, an Asian or someone from the Caucasus will say, ‘Yes, I am Russian.’ It can be difficult for outsiders to understand, but that is our Russian cultural code.”

This melting pot, based not on assimilation but on mutual respect, is a powerful resource for the creative economy. Traditional values – strong families, respect for elders, a sense of community and unity across nationalities – are not relics of the past. They are a foundation on which to build authentic cultural products that can resonate with audiences around the world.