Russian

Russian is spoken by more than 255 million people in Russia and around the world, making it the eighth most spoken language in the world. With large communities in Europe, Latin America, and the United States, many Russian speakers have made Texas their home. Russian is a Slavic language written in the Cyrillic alphabet, related to other Slavic languages, including Polish, Czech, Serbian/Croatian, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian. The cities of Moscow, Russia’s capital, and Saint Petersburg, its cultural capital, are among the most important financial, cultural, and political hubs in the world.

Russian culture is one of the world's richest, boasting a treasure trove of masterpieces in architecture, literature, art, theater, music, ballet, cinema, and many other areas. St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow and the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Tolstoy's War and Peace and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, silent films of Eisenstein and Academy Awards’ nominated masterpieces of Zvyagintsev, Tchaikovsky’s ballets and Chekhov’s dramas are just some examples of Russian cultural heritage. Russian and Soviet achievements in space exploration, sports, medicine, science, and technology are world-famous, and Russia continues to play a central role in the world political arena. In the last decade, Russian has become a critical foreign language used in a wide variety of professional fields, including business, engineering, education, law, and medicine, government and academia.

UT Austin’s Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies offers four years’ worth of formal Russian instruction, starting with Intensive first- and second-year Russian (RUS 601C and RUS 611C), and its non-intensive, online equivalent (RUS 406, RUS 407, and RUS 412K), two non-sequential third-year courses (RUS 322C and RUS 322W), and, finally, fourth-year courses (RUS 326, various topics). A student at UT can minor in Russian language or major in Russian, East European or Eurasian Studies.

Online Russian at UT is a fully developed online sequence with both synchronous and asynchronous components and is designed to bring absolute novice learners to an intermediate level proficiency. The content was designed and developed in house at UT in conjunction with our liberal arts development studio. The three-semester sequence is semi-intensive and equates to a traditional 2-year college course. Each of the classes is offered in both the fall and spring semesters. The first and second class, RUS 406/407, is additionally offered during the first summer session. 

The Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES) at UT offers competitive scholarships for undergraduates and graduate students from any department or college to fund study of Russian language here at UT or in Russia and other countries. To find out more and apply for funding, visit the CREEES Scholarships page.

Students with prior knowledge of Russian who are looking to continue studying Russian or trying to receive credit may contact Heather Rice (hrrice@utexas.edu), or UT Testing Services for information on placement or credit.