Locations outside of Russia to study Russian?

[Josh Wilson]

Nicole, et al, 

To directly answer your question, yes, this is true. Apparently those currently abroad on Boren funding retain the funding and the ability to stay abroad. However, for next year, there will be no new awards given for study in Russia. Supposedly this decision is for only the next year’s funding cycle – which mean that it may return following that cycle. I suppose we can still hope for the best. 

There seems to be no concrete reasoning for it besides the “escalations in tensions.” This would seem to put safety vaguely in the forefront, but my personal hunch is that there are a lot of politicians who don’t want any US spending heading to Russia for any reason – more or less the same idea of what happened at NASA – the agency was given a broad directive to back off cooperation and is (likely grudgingly). 

Unfortunately, just like this summer when they halted ProjectGo funding for locations in Russia, they have made their decision very late for students to rearrange their plans. Many already have tickets – so, this will probably more directly adversely affect bright American college students than it will any Russian official, oligarch, or the Russian economy.

But most of that is just theory from my hunches – thankfully, as many have already covered here, there are several places where one can study Russian abroad in effective immersive environments. SRAS is currently working with a few students and study abroad offices to reroute those with Boren funding. 

SRAS’s currently offers Russian courses in Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek), Georgia (Batumi), and Ukraine (Kiev). 

Josh Wilson
Assistant Director
The School of Russian and Asian Studies
Editor in Chief
Vestnik, The Journal of Russian and Asian Studies
SRAS.org 
jwilson at sras.org


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                        http://seelangs.wix.com/seelangs
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/seelang/attachments/20140806/1e8f6f51/attachment.html>