Russia should pay more attention to positive facts of promotion of Russian language abroad. Leading, creative producer of the Vesti FM radio station, Georgy Saralidze, said recently during the "It’s Not Evening Yet" program. During the episode titled "Russian language should become language of science and economics," he together with radio host Vladimir Averin discussed position of Russian language in the modern world and its prospects.
“At one time, Vesti.FM broadcasted a series of reports from former republics of the Soviet Union about how current situation with Russian language there, whether Russian schools still exist there and so on. At that time, there was a wonderful report from Azerbaijan where it was shown that there are a lot of Russian schools and schools studying Russian language in the country that had relations with the largest Russian universities - Moscow State University, MGIMO and others. There were many conferences on the Russian language, there was exchange of students and cultural relations were at the highest level," he said.
However, high position of Russian language in Azerbaijan doesn't receive proper coverage in the Russian media. "I don’t see this in the information field. We must say: "Yes! It's great! Thank you for what you are doing!" When you do something and nobody knows about it, it’s bad. It’s wrong when they don’t talk about this attitude to Russian language, they don’t show gratitude at the highest level. These are very important things that need to be dealt with systematically," he noted.
Creative producer of Vesti.FM also spoke about how the attitude to the Russian language in Georgia has changed in a short time.
“At some point, Russian language was “turned off” in Georgia. It left the country together with native speakers, not only ethnic Russians, Ukrainians or Belarusians, but also Georgians, who left because it was impossible for it to economically stay because of the war and devastation. Naturally, teachers left, Russian schools and departments in higher educational institutions closed," Saralidze said.
“Two more decades have passed - and lo and behold! Economic sitation, tourism and realization that northern neighbor, no matter how you feel about him, won't go anywhere, even without diplomatic relations, changed the situation. Once again streets of Tbilisi are full of young people who speak Russian," Saralidze concluded.
