Russian B.A.

Russian is the native language of some 150 million citizens of the Russian Federal Republic. It is one of the five official languages of the UN, and ranks with English, Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, and Spanish as a major world language. Russian remains the unofficial lingua franca of the former Soviet republics, an indispensable communications tool across all of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Russian is a major language for scientific publication, and it is an increasingly important language for business and trade as Russian institutions, both public and private, integrate with their European and American counterparts.

Besides a thorough grounding in the Russian language, students in the Russian major become conversant with the enormous wealth of Russian cultural heritage in literature, visual art, theater, and music. In particular, Russia has produced one of the world's most vibrant and exciting literary traditions, including the works of poets like Pushkin, Lermontov, Blok, and Akhmatova, and writers like Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov. Despite the upheavals caused by the fall of communism, Russian literary culture remains vibrant today, and only a fraction of this fascinating contemporary work is available in translation.

Further information on the value of a Russian major can be found at http://modules.russnet.org/why/.