Russian

• BA Russian (R700)

Joint honours

• BA Czech and Russian (R701)
• BA French and Russian (RR17)
• BA German and Russian (RR27)
• BA History of Art and Russian (VR37)
• BA Italian and Russian (RR37)
• BA Philosophy and Russian (RV75)
• BA Politics and Russian (RL72)
• BA Russian and Portuguese (RR57)
• BA Spanish and Russian (RR47)

Beginners in Russian, and students with A-level or equivalent, study language separately until the final year. Beginners follow a core programme with a specialist ab initio teacher. Both groups benefit from frequent contact with experienced native speaker teachers.

Our cultural programme in year one equips you with the knowledge and skills to explore aspects of Russia in more depth later. All students study key periods in Russian history alongside selected texts, images or films. Single Honours and post-A-level students additionally take units on the Russian novel, contemporary Russia through the media or beginners Czech, which all other students may take up in year two.

Options in later years allow you to explore Russia through the study of its literature, history, religious, political and artistic ideas, cinema, visual and folk culture. You may also be able to select options offered by the School of Modern Languages.

Russian will suit you if you are an enthusiastic modern languages student, who enjoys exploring the history and culture of other countries, but are eager to branch out beyond typical, Western-European-oriented modern languages studies and discover something unequivocally new and different. Russian is a wonderfully exotic-looking and sounding language, which possesses something of the mysterious allure of Oriental languages, but in fact puts itself together like a mainstream European language.

Russian Studies will also suit you if you are attracted to the fierce, sometimes violent battle of philosophical and cultural ideas that pervades Russia’s extraordinary history, literature and cinema. If you have a pragmatic eye on Russia’s critical strategic role in the geopolitics of the coming decades, you will find that advanced fluency in Russian is already a valuable skill in numerous careers.

Beginners and post-A-Level (or equivalent) students are taught separately, but work towards the same examination at the end of second year. Language teaching takes place in informal seminar groups, where tutors and students quickly get to know each other and there are regular opportunities to contribute and receive feedback. Regular written homework allows you to reinforce your learning and track your progress.

Language assessment involves testing of all skills, including speaking, writing, listening and reading comprehension. Our comprehensive range of cultural and historical options is also taught mainly in seminar-size groups, where students are regularly asked to give presentations and to contribute to the direction and content of discussion. The department is regularly praised by external examiners for the variety of its methods of assessment in cultural and historical units, which include coursework and examination essays, commentaries and assessed presentations.