St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow

Why take Russian? Just a few reasons:

• The Russian Federation is the largest country in the world
• It’s one of the BRIC countries, the “big four” newly developing economies.
• Russia has the 6th largest GDP/PPP (by purchasing power parity) in the world (ahead of Brazil, France, the UK, and of course Italy and Spain and any Arab country).
• Moscow has more billionaires than any other city in the world.
• The changes since the breakup of the Soviet Union have made Russia one of the most exciting places to live and work.
• Russian is the lingua franca throughout the former Soviet Union and much of Eastern Europe. If we include those who speak Russian as a second language, there are more Russian speakers in the world than there are speakers of Arabic, Portuguese, Japanese, German, French, or Italian.
• Because the State Department considers Russian a critical need language, it offers ample funding opportunities to study it.  This summer, three of our students won fully-funded Critical Language Scholarships to travel to and study in Russia for 8 weeks.

Why take Russian at Middlebury?

• Middlebury offers more opportunities to learn about Russia and Eastern Europe than any comparable college. Small class size, School in Russia (Moscow, Irkutsk and Yaroslavl), the intensive summer Russian School, and a dedicated faculty make Middlebury’s the best undergraduate Russian program in the country.
• Russian grad Sophie Clark ’11 won Survivor last year