Prevent the Third World War (and 4 more great reasons of learning Russian)
Nowadays the relationships between Russia and ‘the United West’ are worse than in the darkest times of the Cold War. Joint allegations, expulsions, restrictions, and counter-sanctions, where each side claims only itself to be right. But every challenge brings an opportunity, and for foreigners, it’s the best time to learn Russia. Wanna know why? (Spoiler: in this text, you won’t find any words about Dostoevsky, the difference between the shadows of blue color in Russian or ‘mysterious Slavic soul’).
1. Prevent the Third World War.
There is a special term: ‘the second track diplomacy’. This mean, when authorities and diplomats degrade the relationship, the only channel of the international communication is face-to-face ‘folk diplomacy’ between experts, businessmen, scientists, journalists, SJWs at the international conferences… and even common people via Facebook or Instagram. How would you break up an aggression, when you’ve drunk lots of tea with lemon facing your possible adversaries? For both sides, the main reason of conflict is the ignorance and lack of knowledge of the counterpart’s values, soul, and power. To prevent the world from the WW3 by learning the language of the world’s ‘bad guys’ — isn’t an… the asymmetric answer to the military hysteria?
2. Be the first in the explorations.
If you’ve ever participated international rusist (Russian Studies Sciences) conferences, you’d piteously find out that the average age of the Western rus-experts exceeds 60. Of course, we regard seniors, but who will change them in the next 10-15 years? Maybe you? In fact, the main Western universities offer lot’s of Chinese, Arabic, European or African studies… but except the Russian ones. And even existing has only few students. This means, you won’t have competitors in your Russian studies, and likely to make new science eхplorations in Russian and Slavic-based human arts.
On the other hand, the Western audience wants to know more about Kremlin’s inner and foreign policy, but most of the Western mass media don’t staff the Russian-practicing journalists (and even those who write about Russia hardly ever know the language!). Consequently, with this skill, you could find a good prestigious job and could visit Russia by the grants of your employer.
3. Marry a great spouse.
During last 80 years Russia has passed through starvation, mass terror, World Wwar with 27 mln Russian victims, autocracy, regime collapse, gangsta capitalism and current united-West pressure. But it’s still alive drinking kompot from the samovar with bears riding a bicycle. So every Russian could survive in the situation any other extinct. With a Russian spouse, you’d be sure that all mechanisms in and around your house would work properly (if they don’t, the Russian spouse would repair them with doorkey and paper clip). And no thief or rapist would encroach you, or the Russian annihilate him with a single grumpy face.
4. Make incredible business.
Do you know that the Russian national social network, Vkontakte (vk.com) was the clone of Facebook? But it became really a burst startup converted into profitable business. So did the Russian websearch engine Yandex, which firstly was the adaptation of Yahoo. Thus, you can just copy a working Western startup for Russia and make a lucrative business, because its market still hasn’t lots of services that are routine in the West. Additionally, Russian economy grows fast, and its obligations are more profitable than the U.S. are E.U. ones… but of course more risky. So modern Russia is like America in the XIX century, which is waiting for courageous and energetic self-made women and men from the Old World. Are you fond of Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ Heroes? She was Russian, and this explains a lot. By the way, most of Russians don’t know foreign languages. But if the hill doesn’t come to Muhammad, Mohammad comes to the hill.
5. Learn one language instead of dozen.
According to the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus, Russian is its second state language. By the law of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Russian is the language of cross-national communication. If you travelled to Finland, Israel, Turkey or Czechia, the staff would probable know Russian (because lots of Russians live here, and the Russian tourists used to spend more money than others). Having said some Russian words in a Serbian restaurant, you’ll get a reduction (because Serbian people are the real fans of Russia). Making business with Uzbekistan, Kirgizstan and Tajikistan, you need to know only one language, Russian, because the inhabits of these three countries use it communicating each other.
2018年4月3日
