The problems of the Russian language in the world space were discussed by the Russianists of India and Russia

Russian Center for Science and Culture in New Delhi

The international scientific-practical conference "Russification in the World Space: Traditions and Perspectives" dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War was held in the online format. The conference was organized by INDAPRYAL and MAPRYAL with the support of the Russian Embassy in India and Rossotrudnichestvo Mission in India. Ambassador of Russia in India N.R. Kudashev, Ambassador of India in Russia B.V. Varma, President of INDAPRYAL Prof. R.N. Menon, President of MAPRYAL V.I. Tolstoy and other prominent scientists took part in the opening ceremony. More than hundred linguists, teachers of Russian language, heads of language centers, russians and indologists from more than ten countries of the world presented their reports.

At the first plenary session "Russian in the world space", the director of MAPRYAL secretariat A.V.Korotyshev told also about efforts which are undertaken by MAPRYAL for effective distribution and popularization of teaching of Russian language abroad, about new textbooks, manuals and the interactive digital technologies coming to the aid to teachers of Russian abroad. The second plenary session "India and Russia: Cultural Heritage" became a platform to discuss the historical interaction of our cultures and the prospects for mutually beneficial humanitarian cooperation.

The reports of the eighth section of the conference "Teaching Russian Language, Literature and Culture in Distance Learning" aroused special interest of the listeners and participants of the conference, as due to the pandemic the issues of online learning have touched upon each teacher and caused many problems in the educational process. Recently, many quality distance learning tools have been created, and methods are rapidly developing.

Tatyana Perova, head of the RCSC's Russian Language Training Center in New Delhi, held a roundtable discussion "Notes by Indian and Russian teachers on the problems of Indian students and methods of solving them," where the colleagues discussed the problems of teaching Russian literature in the Indian classroom, the peculiarities of teaching students with different native languages, some aspects of adaptation of Indian students in Russian universities and other issues. In her speech, T. Perova talked about opportunities to improve Russian language teaching in Indian educational institutions.

Summing up the results of the conference, Prof. Nilakshi Suryanarayan particularly mentioned that the whole section of the conference was devoted to the 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War: "All the organizers of the conference agree that it is necessary to talk about war with the younger generation so that the horrors of war will never be repeated. Taking into consideration the repeated facts of falsification of history, it is our duty to preserve the truth about the past war," said Prof. Suryanarayan. She called the conference successful and the current phase of development of Russian studies effective.