• Start date:  15.09.2026
• End date:  15.09.2026
• RU:  «Сочинский диалог» на Международном фестивале молодежи
• Status: Completed

A panel discussion entitled “It’s Written Online: Truth in the Post-Truth Era” was held at the International Youth Festival as part of the Znanie educational marathon. The event was organized by the Russian-Austrian Public Forum “Sochi Dialogue.”

Amid an overwhelming flow of information, when emotions, anonymous posts, and AI algorithms increasingly overshadow verified facts, the participants discussed how to preserve critical thinking, build trust in scientific knowledge, and engage with historical memory in a rapidly changing information environment.

Opening the discussion, Andrey Fursenko, Aide to the President of the Russian Federation and Co-Chair of the “Sochi Dialogue” Forum, emphasized that the nature of expert knowledge is inseparable from the researcher’s individual perspective:

“Any expertise is subjective, because what makes an expert interesting is precisely the fact that they have their own point of view. We cannot demand absolute objectivity from expertise — what matters is that it is transparent, well-reasoned, and open to scrutiny. Trust does not arise when an expert claims to know everything, but when they are willing to show how they arrived at their conclusion.”

Developing the discussion on working with historical documents, Andrey Sorokin, Director of the Institute for History and Archives at the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH), highlighted the risks that arise when the lessons of the past are ignored:

“Politicians, unwilling to know history, are plunging the European continent into a constant succession of interethnic conflicts and everything that comes with them.”

In the second part of the session, the experts focused on protecting value-based sovereignty and working with primary sources. Andrey Loginov, Rector of the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH), shared seven principles of working with sources with the participants, highlighting the adaptability of historical scholarship in times of crisis: “Historians are no strangers to living through situations that frighten us all.”

Irina Kraeva, Rector of Moscow State Linguistic University (MSLU), addressed the way the younger generation perceives information and the development of critical analysis skills among young people: “Recently, I’ve attended a lecture by prominent sociologists, and according to their observations, one of the characteristics of today’s generation — something that is very much in vogue and widely discussed these days — is the refusal to take things on faith.”

Participants in the discussion also emphasized the importance of primary sources as a foundation that enables people to engage with facts independently, assess their reliability, and form their own understanding of the past. A source is not merely a record of an event, but also a foundation of national identity: an understanding of where we came from, what happened to us, and the foundations upon which our shared historical memory was formed.

In this context, truth in the post-truth era can increasingly no longer be seen as a ready-made answer that is simply there to be found online. Truth becomes a skill — the ability to search for, verify, and compare sources, to question information, and to distinguish fact from interpretation. It is precisely this skill that enables people to maintain independent judgment in a world where the volume of information is constantly growing, while its reliability is not always obvious.

Summing up the discussion, the speakers considered what can serve today as the main guide in the search for truth — technology, legal frameworks, or the personal reputation of the researcher. The session demonstrated that no digital tool can replace a person’s ability to approach information critically and independently determine the grounds on which it can be trusted.

Working with primary sources, critical thinking, and a culture of scholarly inquiry are therefore not only tools for preserving historical memory, but also important foundations of personal and national identity. In the post-truth era, the task is not to find a single source that can declare where the truth lies, but to develop in each person a lasting ability to search for it.