Vladimir Kochin: In Seven Years We Have Created a Working Worldwide Network

— No doubt everything is relative: in terms of history, seven years is a pretty short run, but for a man it is a serious stage of growth, accumulation of strength and opportunities. Within this term, the foundation has become one of the most efficient nongovernmental organizations promoting the Russian language and culture abroad. In many respects, it is the achievement Vyacheslav Nikonov, the Chairman of the Management Board, and Lyudmila Verbitskaya, the Chair of the Board of Trustees, but also – quite naturally – of the creative professional and like-minded team working in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Vladivostok.

Within these years, our organization has managed to do a lot – the enumeration of things done alone would make for a multi-volume edition, but we are not planning to stop there: we are conducting complex and thorough work with everyone turning to us for support.

The main achievement of recent years is that there has formed a functional core round the foundation: those are teachers of Russian, students and pupils, artists, writers — all those who see themselves as supporters of the Russian language and culture, those who treat Russia with love and care. They are the ones who constitute the Russian World, or Russkiy Mir. Russkiy Mir in Bulgaria is comprised of wonderful people, among whom I cannot but mention the heads and teachers of Varna Free University — it is there where the first Russian Center in Europe opened, Plovdiv University, the Library of Sofia, dozens of schools, gymnasia, libraries and cultural institutions. And, of course, there are our guides to Bulgaria and the agents of the Bulgarian culture in Russia – wonderful Bulgarian singer, Honorary Artist of Russia Biser Kirov, tens and hundreds of cultural workers, academics, experts and public leaders. We always feel their support and are grateful for the contribution they pledge to popularize and promote the Russian language and culture in Bulgaria. We bow low to all our supporters in Bulgaria, to everyone who likes Russia and its peoples.

Support for projects, including financial aid, aimed at promoting the Russian language and culture is one of the priority areas of our work. We award grants to nonprofit organizations, as well as educational and cultural institutions, and public organizations. Grants are awarded through competition. There are expert councils — there are two of them in the Foundation — formed by top-level professionals: one in the Russian language, and the other in cultural humanitarian cooperation. Every application is scrupulously considered. This is a serious responsibility: within the last five years alone, we have had over 5 000 organizations asking us for assistance – among those professional associations of teachers, societies of Russian culture, societies of Russian friendship, and associations of Russian compatriots.

And since we are speaking of years of work, I can just quote a few numbers that speak for themselves: over the period starting 2007, the Foundation has opened 98 Russian Centers in 43 countries, and these centers of ours are located on every continent – with the sole exception of Antarctica, perhaps. As of now, there are over forty functioning centers in Europe, with three of them in Bulgaria — in Sofia, Plovdiv and Varna. In 2013, Russian centers as a whole conducted over 100 large contests, academic Olympics and quizzes, and over 800 specialized seminars. We are happy with the fact that people working in our centers are not just high-level professionals, but they are also very enthusiastic. It’s hard to mention each and every type of events running in the centers — those are meetings with writers, public lectures, summer schools, educational programs for kids, and advanced training...

— The Russian language, being a stunning sample of the global civilization heritage, sets specific requirements. As Nikolai Gogol wrote, poets and writers of Russia “have already done good bringing around the sonority unheard before... Our poetry has tried all of the chords, been raised by literature of every nation, listened to the lyre of every poet, and been forged into a world tongue to ready all for a higher purpose.”

Preservation of the Russian language globally is the foundation’s direct objective, as the main goal of the foundation established by the presidential decree in 2007 is to support and popularize the Russian language and its learning programs abroad. Our work in its entirety is focused on this noble goal. Language is a crucial tool for intercultural communication, a means mutually enriching cultures of different nations: it is only by understanding other cultures and speaking in tongues that a person becomes truly rich in spirit and relevantly educated.

— Matter of fact, statistics can be misleading, and it is difficult to count in the people who might be learning Russian on their own, or in private schools, or with individual tutors, or kids in bilingual families. Yet, the most modest of the estimates we have say there are about 300 million of those who consider Russian their native tongue, have studied and are speaking it now or are learning it today.

The Russian World as such changes its composition, and the historical realities of the last century, as well as migration flows considerably changed the image of the Russian speaker.

It is encouraging to see the climbing numbers of Russian learners among the native populations of foreign lands, and those learners are not only children of emigrants or mixed families; the numbers are growing among those who need Russian due to their professional activities — employees of foreign companies doing business with Russian partners, the UN, Council of Europe and European Commission officers, where Russian is one of the working languages, employees of foreign ministries, institutions, and parliamentary structures.

— The foundation, as I mentioned, is establishing Russian Centers instrumental in promoting educational programs, awarding grants, holds events, and also creating a network of Russkiy Mir Cabinets.

The Russkiy Mir Cabinet is a target program of our foundation aiming, among other programs of ours, at creating favorable conditions for Russian learners, and assisting advanced training in the language. Apart from fiction, popular science and methodological textbooks, study rooms are complete with audio and video recordings, training programs and info-resources. The program was launched in 2009. At present, 136 Russkiy Mir Cabinets function in 53 countries. There are seven of them in Bulgaria.

— Of course, there are various types of aid for that. Like I said before, whether it is the formats of study cabinets, Russian centers or grants – in any case none of the enquiries or applications are ignored.

— Thank you for this question. It is indeed an important pressing issue which the foundation is specifically focusing on. We award grants for methodological seminars and advanced training courses to educational institutions of various levels; besides, the foundation is conducting its own advanced training – for example, a year ago there was a course for Russian centers’ directors under the auspices of Pushkin Institute.

Regional meetings of Russian center teachers also facilitate experience exchange, and such a meeting is planned this November in China for the Chinese teachers of Russian, and this June — in Krakow, for the Russian Center of Eastern Europe.

The foundation helps publish profile methodological journals – Russian Language Abroad among others, and supports a substantive number of events within MAPRYAL. With financial support from the foundation, new syllabi are being developed, with the priority placed on the ones prepared jointly by Russian and foreign authors.

— “There shall be a hundred flowers blooming, and a hundred schools competing”, Mao Zedong used to say, and we do not see a problem in the fact that every people and nation strive to preserve and popularize their language and culture. But it is important to remember of the unacceptability of xenophobia, separatism and intolerance towards other peoples’ cultures. The main thing in this work is the methods and activities we apply for humanitarian purposes. On our end, we remain true to the principle of noninterference and the separation of the political and the humanitarian. I am confident it is this position that enables us to preserve, as you say, the positive image of a spiritual leader.

— We see as one of the major objectives of the foundation the uniting the top Russian philologists of the world, many of whom, by the way, head Russian Centers. We have opened centers in the universities where they pay acute attention to Russian, and the programs they develop are applied in practice. Also, it is should be noted that there are direct contacts with the experts of the Russian Consortium — Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University, the Pushkin Institute, Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia. All of this together molds a powerful network of top expert quality. Experts meet, talk, exchange experience, and develop excellent learning methodologies.

Organized by the Foundation, the Russkiy Mir Assembly has become one of the traditional large-scale sites for such communication. This year guests from all around the world will flock to Sochi for the assembly.

— We are planning to develop our programs that have already become conventional on a qualitatively new level. The foundation is consistently reaffirming the vertical axis of Russian-language education and Russian studies. And as regards Russian schools abroad – we will continue with this during this year. We will direct our attention to the foreign mass media writing in Russian. In 2014, there is another colorful page to our work record – the Year of Russkiy Mir Culture: there are a number of events held across the world within this campaign. Our goal is to draw the attention of Russians and compatriots residing abroad to the treasury of the Russian culture, the story of creation and humanistic meanings of the masterpieces of the Russian literature and arts.

— The Bulgarian people are our brethren. Bulgaria is our longtime, reliable partner, a country we have strongest bloodline ties with. It is very hard to destroy the historical, spiritual and linguistic commonality. And our task is to do our best for these ties to get stronger, and for the language to become the bridge connecting our countries, cultures and peoples. The foundation has always been supporting initiatives from Russian philologists of Bulgaria, and I am sure that further on we will continue to enjoy our joint projects and their practical outcomes.