28.03.2024

Who Speaks Russian Well? The Kostomarov Forum Knows

The Kostomarov Forum began its work this morning in a former Moscow city manor house that was filled with lilacs and some of the finest speakers and writers of Russian in the capital.

The Forum is a five-day online event dedicated to the Russian language, this year focusing on the language and how it functions — or doesn’t function — in the new world of information technology and the internet. It is being held by the Pushkin Institute and is named after Vitaly Kostomarov, the first rector of the Institute and a pioneer in the study of Russian and teaching it as a foreign language.

At the opening ceremony, the current rector of the Pushkin Institute, Margarita Rusetskaya, asked Mikhail Osadchy, vice-rector of research and scholarship, to reveal the results of a poll of Russians about who, in their opinion, spoke Russian well. The respondents, who ranged in age from young children to pensioners, voted for six speakers: Alyona Doletskaya (former editor of Vogue, writer); Nikolai Tsiskaridze (ballet dancer, teacher and now rector of the Vaganova Academy); Yekaterina Shulman (a political scientist); Dmitry Bykov (writer of fiction and non-fiction); Leonid Parfyonov (television producer, writer and host); and the surprise winner: Danya Milokhin (blogger, rap musician and TikToker).

Alyona Doletskaya and Nikolai Tsiskaridze were present to accept their awards in perfectly correct and very engaging Russian.

The forum sessions will cover a wide range of topics connected with the Russian language, such as studies on Russian employers’ preferences for language competency among their employees, Russian as a second language, and “Finances and romances: the language of bankers and musicians.”

Journalists Worldwide Urge Russia to Stop Persecuting Independent Media

Hundreds of journalists from scores of countries have called on Russia to end its persecution of independent media, according to an open letter published on the Russian student-run news outlet DOXA’s website Monday.

The World Press Freedom Day statement came a month after authorities filed a criminal case against DOXA’s editorial team for allegedly “inciting minors to participate in illegal activities.” Also in April, security agents raided the home of Roman Anin, editor-in-chief of the iStories (Important Stories) investigative outlet, and labeled one of Russia’s most-read news sites, Meduza, a “foreign agent.”

“Russia’s independent media are under serious threat,” 235 journalists representing 63 countries said.

The signatories representing North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa decried the intimidation of independent media “through legal restrictions, changes in ownership, fines and criminal cases” since Vladimir Putin’s ascent to the presidency two decades ago.

“This policy has led to the fact that the Russian media landscape is now dominated by outlets controlled by the state or Vladimir Putin’s long-time friends,” they said.

Citing the latest criminal cases and “foreign agent” labels as well as anti-free speech laws that Russia passed in the last decade, the international journalists said that “the Kremlin intends to silence independent media and deny Russian citizens access to truthful information.”

“Today on World Press Freedom Day we the undersigned express our solidarity with our colleagues from iStories, DOXA, Meduza and other independent Russian media who are under unprecedented pressure and who nevertheless continue their hard work telling the truth and calling the authorities to account.”

Russia fell one spot in Reporters Without Borders’ 2021 global press freedom index to 150th place, ranking below countries such as Zimbabwe and South Sudan.

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