An article featured today in Inside Higher Ed seems to indicate that Russian is back to the heydays of its Cold War popularity. Except now the fascination with an exotic, forbidden land has been replaced by the intrigue of potential lucrative careers to which knowledge of Russian could open the door that has been influenced by a more generalized access to Russia/Russians. Aspiring spies have been replaced by burgeoning sports attorneys, bankers and oil traders. For those more interested in relative immediate gratification, there is the fantasy that Moscow is a fun and exotic place with great clubs, beautiful women and parties ready to behold.
(As someone who majored in Russian when it was not so popular, here is a word to the wise: not all careers related to Russian are particularly lucrative, and Moscow may be fun and exotic but it is also many things that do not even share a zip code with fun and exotic.)
Fascination with Russia seems to be as American as apple pie and automobiles. For the foreseeable future, Russia will always be of interest to Americans and Americans will always be interested in Russia. For as long as high school students are required to read “Crime and Punishment”, there will always be college students interested in taking Russian.
What is fascinating about this article is not that there is an apparent spike in Russian enrollment at American universities. Rather, what’s interesting is that this is happening when other languages (German, Italian, and other European languages) are being cut at American universities. Could this be a pivotal point at which Russian is no longer a “less-commonly taught” language and instead assumes a new place along with its more mainstream romantic and germanic counterparts? Somehow, this seems doubtful. Maybe Russian will eventually gain enough traction and popularity to sustain a higher enrollment consistently over time. For now, this just seems like another limited surge that will fade away in a few years only to be realized again as the cycle continues.
Perhaps this is yet another example of Russian exceptionalism?
