Russian in the Real World

It begins with a spark.

For Diana Imperatore, it was a love of ballet. For David Swafford, it was the Olympics (and the mystery of “CCCP”). Claudia Ricci was fascinated by the Cyrillic alphabet. Sandy Williams turned away from a career in herpetology after a high school trip to the Soviet Union and a semester abroad in southern Russia. Melanie Peyser was “hooked” after a required summer reading of Andrea Gray’s Russian Memoirs.

There are as many different reasons for deciding to study Russian as there are people studying it. And now, with a newly-liberalized Russia, there are more opportunities than ever for persons with strong Russian language skills to find excellent jobs in areas that correspond with the “spark” that led them to Russian in the first place.