Why Study Russian and Ukrainian?
- Russia is the world’s largest country covering one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area
- Ukraine is Europe's second largest country and is an increasingly important player in international affairs and global trade
- Among the five most widely spoken languages in the world, Russian is not only the mother tongue of a nation spanning 11 time zones, but is spoken every day in over a dozen European and Asian countries
- Ukrainian is one of Canada's heritage languages with almost a million Canadians of Ukrainian background
- Russian is a gateway to unmatched cultural riches, from the novels of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, to the music of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and the cinema of Eisenstein and Tarkovsky
- Russian nobel laureates include Ivan Bunin, Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Sholokhov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
- Second language is a tool of increasing importance for global business: Russia is a leader in numerous fields of industry and resource extraction (steel, precious metals, coal, oil and gas, etc.), and remains a huge potential market for Western goods
- The University of Victoria offers BC’s only Major program in Russian language, literature and culture. Being recognized as one of the best Russian programs in Canada, it consistently attracts capable and enthusiastic students, who enjoy small class sizes, unique computer-aided language instruction, and the collegial atmosphere of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies
- UVic is also the only university in BC offering the Ukrainian language courses
- The language will get you closer to the Kremlin walls and the treasures of the Hermitage. Learning the language will give you the excuse and opportunity to set up on an exciting trip to Russia
- Ukrainian is a Slavic language closely related to Russian, which makes it easy to study both languages at the same time
Famous Russians
Famous Ukrainians
