With 145 million native speakers, Russian is one of the ten most widely spoken languages in the world. An additional 110 million people speak Russian as a second language.
Russia is the world’s largest country, stretching across two continents and eleven time zones.
From the days of the Russian Empire of the tsars to the Soviet Union of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Gorbachev to the Russian Federation of Putin and Medvedev, Russia’s immense size and resources have given it lasting strategic importance.
Russian literature has produced masterpieces in poetry and prose. The writings of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pasternak, and Solzhenitsyn are admired worldwide.
Russian music, ballet, art, and architecture have a vibrant past and exciting present.
Russian hackers are among the most skilled and troublesome in the world.
Over a quarter of the world’s scientific literature is published in Russian.
Russian-American relations are complex, challenging, and politically important.
There are numerous job opportunities in government bodies like the State Department, the Commerce Department, the Justice Department, and the various intelligence agencies; in Western firms that do business in and with Russia; in a wide range of non-profit organizations.
As Russia develops economically and politically, the numbers and variety of career paths available to college graduates with a knowledge of Russian language and culture are constantly expanding.
