The Russian language in the world: The past, present, and future

Abstract

This article draws on the results of monitoring the Russian language functioning in the world. The monitoring was conducted on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation in 2004 and the Ministry of Education and Science in 2011—2012. The study used data provided by censuses, national ministries of education, and Russian research and cultural centres abroad. An important contribution was expert judgements from heads of national associations of teachers of Russian language and literature.

Keywords

• russian as a foreign language
• higher education
• secondary education
• diachrony