The Government of the Russian Federation has decided to stop financing the project to create the Great Russian Encyclopedia (BDE).
The project management complained to journalists that funds for the work of the site with the articles of the encyclopedia have ceased to be allocated since the end of 2023.
At the same time, 35 volumes were published over the previous 22 years, which contain up to 100 thousand articles. Since 2019, the management of the encyclopedia portal has been funded from the budget. The last annual estimate of the BDE amounted to 1.1 billion rubles.
It is known that all the materials of the portal will be transferred to the Internet encyclopedia "Ruviki" to "strengthen its competitive advantages."
However, the current employees of the project are demanding to pay off their salary debts, for this purpose they even organized pickets in the center of Moscow.
The government explains that the debts arose this year "due to untimely actions of the management to bring expenses in line with the completed financing."
Nevertheless, the Cabinet of Ministers promised to pay off salary debts at the expense of the Reserve Fund of the Russian Federation.
It should be recalled that in February the government was instructed to create a BDE in electronic format. According to the rector of Moscow State University Viktor Sadovnichy, the volumes of the encyclopedia can be accessed on a flash drive.
As reported by EADaily, in March, Anton Gorelkin, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications, said that Wikipedia could be blocked in Russia.