40 Years and Closing

In November of last year, the administration of Norwich University decided to close the 42-year-old summer Russian School located on its campus in Northfield, Vermont.

A child of Sputnik, Norwich University’s Russian School was founded in 1958 at Windham College. It moved to Norwich in 1968. The intimate atmosphere of the school in this small Vermont town and the commitment to immersion study made it one of the top summer intensive Russian programs in the US throughout the Cold War. The Russian School offered first through fourth year undergraduate instruction in Russian language and culture, as well as graduate courses in literature, culture, theory, and pedagogy. In addition to the longer, ten-week program of study, the Russian School also offered intensive 3-week courses.

Eighty-six year-old Yevelina Bogdanova Artes volunteered for over a decade at Norwich as a native language tutor. She would talk to the students over meals, in the dorms (where she lived alongside students), and help them hone their Russian and acquaint them with the culture. Artes called the closing of Norwich “very sad and unfortunate. The Russian School was a very small center for Russian culture—there was the annual festival, the lecture series, and everything only in Russian. It is very sad to see this ended. The Russian School was created from nothing 40 years ago. In the early 1960s, there were 350 students! Over the years they have just let it dwindle away … people pulled this school together out of nothing over many years and now it is just being tossed aside.”

Benjamin Rifkin, director of the Middlebury Russian School, called the closing of Norwich “very sad.” He noted that Norwich was very flexible with long and short programs of study, as well as opportunities for high school students. The two summer schools also sometimes shared costs to bring in performers and lecturers. Rifkin said that Middlebury is working with Norwich to ensure some “continuation of the Norwich heritage,” e.g. to carry on its literary symposium. In addition, some faculty who previously taught at Norwich will be teaching at Middlebury this coming summer, as will some alumni of the Norwich Russian School.