In February 2022, the President of the Russian Federation gave the order to launch a special operation in Ukraine. After that day, the attitude towards Russia, Russian people, the Russian language, and in general, everything Russian-related changed. These changes are very serious, which means that the consequences will last long.

Many people have lost the desire to visit Russia or learn about the Russian culture. It was sad to watch how Russian scientific inventions, art, music, and literature suddenly became something shameful and useless to everybody. It was hard to hear stories of Russians being shamed in other countries just for being Russian.

In this article, I will not talk about politics or talk about what is bad and what is good. Instead, I will focus on my thoughts about what the perception and attitude toward the Russian language will be like a few years from now.

I was born and raised in Russia, I graduated from the bachelor’s and master’s programs of the Faculty of Philology (specialty Russian language and literature), and I taught Russian at school and at the university for several years. Even after moving to another country, I continued to work as a teacher of the Russian language, created an online school, and kept a blog about the Russian language for foreigners. The Russian language will always be the most special language for me. Of course, I am worried about its fate in our days, when the attitude towards Russia and everything Russian is in a changeable and unstable situation.

I see two possible ways of how things are going to be. The first one, is that for foreigners Russia and the Russian language have always and will always be a mystery due to it being a huge country with a variety of cultures, nature, incomprehensible things, immenseness, strange people, strange language, gloominess, and generosity. All of these things make a lot of people wonder what are these Russians capable of? Are they good or evil? Funny or sad? What is Russian melancholy? What did Dostoevsky write about?
In addition to these questions and mysteries, there has always been polar and contradictory attitudes towards Russia and its people. Sometimes it even seems like foreigners either love Russia or hate it. Today (as I feel) this dichotomy has become even more pronounced, making those who felt attracted by its mysteries more drawn to study the Russian language with an even greater interest than they could ever had. After all, they will want to understand these “strange Russians”, what they think, and their way of living. This will create an interest in learning Russian in order to have access to other sources of information, other than the Western media, to read and understand news in Russian in order to have an idea of ​​what is happening in the world from the point of view of both sides.

The second possible way in which things may unfold is for the Russians who live abroad and have bilingual children to unite and raise awareness and interest in the language within their communities. Perhaps tolerance for Russians will decrease around the world, but Russian-speaking parents raising their children in a multilingual environment will be more careful to ensure that their children will retain the knowledge of their parent’s native language and roots. This will probably lead to closed communities of parents with the same interest to teach their multilingual children the Russian language, tell them about Russia, the Russian culture, and their heritage.