The Decline of Russian

If you want to understand the history of Russian language study in the United States, consider the history of Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Russian language and literature began to be taught at this Ivy League institution in 1918, one year after the Bolshevik revolution. At one point in the decade that followed, there were more undergraduates studying Russian at Dartmouth than at any other place in the US. But, by 1930, enrollment in Russian had declined precipitously—so much so that Russian was removed from the curriculum that year. It took the onset of WWII to see Russian revived in 1942.

After WWII, Russian studies were expanded significantly at Dartmouth. In the 1950s, a major in Russian was offered for the first time. In 1951 the college received a large grant from the Carnegie Corporation to develop its Russian program and expand the Russian collection in its library.

Then came the post-Sputnik boom in government funding for Russian studies. From 1960-1968, Dartmouth held annual summer Russian Language Institutes through the National Defense Language Program. By the 1970s, Dartmouth had seven full-time faculty in its Russian language department.

In the late 1980s to early 1990s, the second boom in Russian language study arrived. The Soviet Union was in the headlines daily and its “mystique quotient” was higher than ever; enrollments in Russian studies courses across the nation were soaring. Dartmouth was no exception—in 1990, the program had 70 new, first-year students of Russian. Nationwide, according to the Modern Language Association, there were over 44,000 college-level students of Russian. But the boom was short-lived. By the mid-1990s, the bubble burst. The MLA data show that there were just under 25,000 students of Russian in 1995. At Dartmouth, new first-year enrollments had dropped to 15. Across the country, program budgets were slashed or eliminated.

Many reasons have been cited for the 1990s decline: funding changes, lack of job opportunities, fear and loathing of Russia by the US media establishment, etc. But the bottom line is that Russia had lost its “sex appeal.”

“The mystery was gone,” said Jerzy Kolodziej, director of Indiana University’s Summer Workshop in Slavic and East European Languages. “People get very serious about the unknown, especially if it is powerful and can hurt you.” In the early- to mid-1980s, US fear and suspicion of the USSR were at their highest levels since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. But in 1991, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fear evaporated. (Notably, study of Japanese and Chinese surged as Russian went on the decline.)

Benjamin Rifkin, Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Madison and director of that school’s Russian program as well as the Middlebury College (Vermont) Summer Russian School, said that we need to understand the current “decline” in a larger perspective. “What we need to recognize is that this era [the late 1980s] was a blip, an unusual one,” Rifkin said. “In the history of Russian language study, that was an anomaly. Now our enrollments are at about 27,000—very parallel to, say, the late 1970s and early 1980s and through much of the rest of the century since WWII.”

The current period has witnessed a parallel downturn in high school and middle school Russian language study enrollments. The Committee on College and Pre-College Russian periodically polls pre-college Russian language study programs. The CCPCR has estimated that there were some 17,800 pre-college age students of Russian in the US at the peak in 1989, declining to 14,600 in 1993, 11,080 in 1994, and 10,800 in fall 1995.

Needless to say, the downward trend has not been an easy one for teachers and programs to stomach. “If you are out in the field and lose 50% of your men, that is a staggering loss,” Kolodziej quipped. The decline has led to the shutdown of several Russian language study programs [see box] and the sharp curtailment of others.

The “crisis” also led many programs to retool themselves, to make themselves more attractive, Rifkin said, but most schemes did not work. “They tried an appeal to Business Russian, because business was booming …  but the reality was that, at the time of huge enrollments, the professional applications were actually pretty minimal. The irony now is that, a few years later, enrollments have plummeted and jobs have increased. Especially in the late 1990s and now early this century, there are a number of great job opportunities.”

To paraphrase Dickens, it may be the worst of times for Russian programs, but times could not be better for students of Russian. “We have the same level of funding as we ever did,” Kolodziej said, “There is no question there is more money to go around for fewer students … if you are a qualified student, it is easier than it ever was to get funding for the summer.”

And, as Rifkin noted, it is also much easier to get a job. “First,” he said, “business is booming. Americans with experience in Russian and experience in another field (i.e. engineering, accounting, law) have great opportunities for employment either in the US or Russia … Second, the nonprofit sector is booming … Finally, the government sector is booming. 50% of positions that require Russian language experience in the government are funded but empty … The federal government considers this to be a crisis of sorts.”

In reaction, the federal government, under the National Security Education Act of 1991, is funding study of less commonly taught languages, from areas of the world where the US has particular national security interests. The program is targeted at students who are studying a language as well as another subject area and it funds study abroad for a semester or year. In return, the students must, within eight years, spend an equivalent amount of time in government service to the amount of time funded abroad. Interestingly, students of Russian have benefited quite disproportionately from this program. While Russian is studied by less than 3% of students studying a language in college, one in seven of the 140 NSEP grants last year went to Russian language students.

According to Rifkin, the federal government has also increased the amount of money and opportunities available for federal employees in agencies (e.g. the FBI, CIA, NSA) to improve their Russian language expertise here in the US.

Still, there is much that could be done to bolster the study of Russian. As Rifkin noted, many US states have imposed mandates for increased study of foreign languages in middle or high schools. But, as is often the case, these mandates come without funding, so schools will look for the least expensive option in hiring language teachers, which usually means adding more Spanish classes. Indeed, since 1980 the study of Spanish in the US has nearly doubled, while study of French, German and Russian have all declined. Rifkin also added that, because there is no Advanced Placement exam for Russian, students cannot get college credit for advanced Russian courses taken in high school, as is the case for French, German and Spanish.

But it is a generally shared conclusion that the most important thing that educators and others can do to foster more Russian language study is to create greater awareness of Russian culture, history, literature and the arts. It is an interest in these subjects that will spur students to the hard work of learning Russian. And this is the very tack that colleges and universities are taking to attract more students into their programs. Richard Sheldon, professor of Russian at Dartmouth, said that he does not think lower nationwide enrollments in Russian is part of a cycle. “I think it is a new reality,” he said. “And we all have to work hard to come up with solutions. Students are just not as interested in things foreign as they were a decade or two ago. Yet our 19th century literature courses are still getting a good response. We need to put more emphasis on culture courses.”

Rifkin agrees. The University of Madison has created another major track of study, not just one devoted to Russian language and literature. The new track is called Russian Language and Civilization and combine area studies with language study. Indiana has integrated the Russian language into area studies since the founding of its Russian and East European Institute in 1958, and many other universities, from Harvard to Berkeley have long offered similar programs.

Study abroad programs are also taking on new dimensions. Renee Stillings, Program Director at the School for Russian and Asian Studies, said “the internet is broadening horizons and opportunities.” SRAS, she said, is “trying to get students to think about Russia in other ways. Surely language study is still the core of things, but there is much more. The stazhirovka and praktika [internship and practicum] are forms of education by definition and some students are using these to literally work their way across Russia, whether working on an archaeological dig in Kherson, Ukraine or taking water samples in Lake Baikal.”

SRAS markets existing language and area studies programs (taught both in English and in Russian) offered by Russian institutions. For instance, Stillings said, “you can take the first three years of a medical degree at Moscow State University (MGU) in English, or undertake a bachelor’s degree in international law at MGU as preparation for a law degree. Or you can teach English at a kids’ camp on Lake Baikal.”

Indeed, the collapse of the USSR has spawned many new opportunities for study of Russian culture and language within Russia—often at prices far below what it might cost for the same term of study here in the US. And programs are not limited to Moscow and St. Petersburg, but stretch to Tver, Voronezh, Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Irkutsk and beyond. But, as Rifkin pointed out, it would be wrong to directly compare study in Russia with summer intensive study programs in the US.

“The primary goal for going abroad,” Rifkin said, “is to grow up and become more mature, not for language improvement. And we highly recommend it. In fact the slogan of Madison’s Study Abroad Office is ‘Just go away!’

“But the interesting thing about the summer programs is that, if done well, the students gain more Russian in the summer than the students would learn for a semester in Russia. Of course, living abroad offers cultural exposure and character building that is not available at summer programs. But summer programs challenge students linguistically, not the other ways, like in Russia…”

In either case, the opportunities for study either in the US or abroad are great. The American Association of Teachers of Russian, Slavic and East European Languages lists on its website [see box, page 46] 14 summer programs in the US, 23 summer programs abroad and 17 year-long or semester programs abroad. The links to the programs and their descriptions offers a very efficient way to help the student decide which program is most suited to their needs.

Of the summer study programs in the US, certainly Middlebury’s Russian School (in Vermont) and Indiana University’s Summer Workshop are the largest and best known, followed by others like Beloit, University of Washington, Monterey and Bryn Mawr, among others. Yet apparently only Middlebury and Indiana offer immersion programs where students live in Russian-only dorms, eat in Russian dining halls and must abide by Russian-only language pledges.

Rifkin, who is director of the Middlebury Russian School (the oldest and largest summer immersion program in Russian in the US), reports that, despite general declines in academic year enrollments across the country, Middlebury’s nine-week summer program remains near capacity. The school had 125 students last year and 135 the year before, and is expected to fill to near 150 this summer because of the closing of the summer Russian School at nearby Norwich [see box, page 44].

Indiana, Kolodziej reported, had 133 students last year in all of the languages it offers (not just Russian, but Slavic and FSU/East European languages from Polish and Azeri to Georgian and Kazak). About half of those were students of Russian. Indiana, which has one of the oldest Summer Russian language workshops in the country (begun in 1950), also offers a six-week pre-workshop study program in St. Petersburg.

In summary, while the future may not be as bright for Russian language study as it seemed in the late 1980s, the situation does seem to have stabilized. As Koloziej said, “the market is regulating itself … like water, it will find its own level.” What is more, there is stable and well-directed funding for serious students and there are excellent job opportunities for students who graduate with Russian language skills. Dartmouth’s Sheldon said that, despite falling enrollments, he knows of at least 30 Dartmouth graduates who are working in Moscow.

Rifkin also reports being optimistic. “We have come through a difficult time and have taken steps to review and improve our programs with respect to the field as a whole. And the word is getting out that students are getting jobs and coming back and talking about them.”  RL

In our next issue: So what can you do with a degree in Russian? Russian Life tracks down current professionals to find out where their language skills have led them.