Russian

Russian is one of the world's major languages, spoken natively by around 150 million people and serving as a lingua franca across much of the former Soviet sphere. It is the language of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Pushkin, of one of the richest literary traditions in the world, and also of a culture and political history that has shaped the twentieth century as decisively as any other. Studying Russian opens access to all of this, alongside the contemporary political, social and cultural realities of Russia and the Russian-speaking world.

Queen Mary University of London offers this four-year full-time Russian degree, which gives you the time to develop genuine linguistic proficiency alongside deep engagement with Russian literature, history and culture. Russian is a demanding language with a complex grammar, and the four-year structure allows you to build from the foundations through to advanced reading, writing, speaking and listening competence at an academic level. Alongside language acquisition you will engage with Russian literature from Pushkin to the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, with Russian history and political thought, and with contemporary Russia and the broader post-Soviet space.

Queen Mary's location in London, with its Russian-speaking community and cultural institutions, enriches the learning context.

Studying Russian develops persistence and the capacity to work through genuine difficulty, precision in grammatical and linguistic analysis, deep cultural understanding, and the kind of serious engagement with another civilisation that very few disciplines can offer.

Graduates from Russian programmes work in diplomacy and the foreign service, translation and interpreting, journalism, international business, the cultural sector, academia and a range of roles in international organisations where knowledge of Russia and the Russian-speaking world is valued. Russian expertise is increasingly significant given the geopolitical importance of the region, and the combination of language skill with cultural and political knowledge is a distinctive and sought-after qualification.