Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 28 – The number
of people studying Russian in the former union republics of the USSR declined
from 54 million in 1991 to 37 million last year, while beyond the borders of
the former Soviet Union, the number doing so dropped from 20 million to a little
more than one million, according to Moscow’s Sotsiotsentr (iarex.ru/news/72939.html).
In
reporting these figures, Rosbalt commentator Leonid Smirnov says that the
Russian language is “losing influence along with the state.” As Russia has
become less important internationally and especially in the world of business,
it is no surprise that its language has lost its position as well (rosbalt.ru/moscow/2019/11/30/1816024.html).
Experts with whom he spoke tried to
find some bright spots such as an increase in the number of Chinese living in
border regions studying Russian, but most conceded that Russian had lost out to
English and even in some cases although to a far lesser degree to other languages
of the former Soviet space like Ukrainian.
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