The All-Russian Festival “Russian language as the national asset of peoples of the Russian Federation” is being organized by Moscow Sholokhov State University of Humanities with the assistance of MAPRYAL – the International Association of Russian Language and Literature Teachers – and the Russian Ministry of Education. It is a component of the target national program “Russian Language.” Notwithstanding, the festival did not degraded into a public crib.
The organizers admit that this February’s event greatly surpassed their expectations. Teachers and students from 83 subjects of the Russian Federation participated in the competition split into 10 nominations. “The festival’s site was visited by more than 300,000 people, more than 30,000 checked in as participants, over 12,000 took the test, and more than 8,000 works were sent to us,” said Vladimir Nechaev, rector of Sholokhov MGTU. Initially the organizers modestly hoped for at least 2,500 entries.
Of no less importance was a heap of comments and feedback from the participants, which means the festival was indeed “live” and exciting. The organizers were happy that Russian was needed and demanded by so many people, who were by no means limited to the “target audience” – teachers of Russian. Students and schoolchildren took an active part in the competition, while many competitive works were joint projects of teachers and students.
The festival was not limited to within the Russian borders. Students learning Russian in Russia and our compatriots residing in Germany, Italy, China, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan (and this is not the full list of geographical sources) sent their works.
Within Russia the most active participant was Tatarstan, whose residents sent three times as many works as did each of the other participating regions. The credit should be given to the region’s Ministry of Education. Among the other leaders are the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Altai Territory, Ulyanovsk Region and Moscow.
Out of the ten announced nominations, two elicited a mass response, namely “Expert in Russian” (for schoolchildren) and “Pedagogical Workshop” – a contest of methodological developments for teaching Russian (for teachers). The lot of the participants was not limited to tests or academic works on methodology. The organizers did not forget about creative assignments either. Thus participants of the Language and Culture nomination had a good chance to narrate on the cultural events or outstanding dwellers of their region in good Russian. As for the Russian Word in Design nomination, this is a contest of Cyrillic penmanship and typography.
Interactive component of the festival was a major factor of its success: creative groups from different regions of Russia could meet and discuss each other’s projects. Nearly 11,000 comments on the festival’s site – not so bad for a competition in Russian!
“Anyone could upload his or her work onto the festival’s site; after it was discussed, the author could then delete it or upload again on entering some of the suggested corrections,” explains philologist Galina Kuznetsova, head of the Festival of Russian project. This network activity that involved some bloggers resulted in the creation of several interregional groups, some of which even submitted their works for competition.
Members of the festival’s organizing committee do not conceal that they were greatly surprised at such “grassroots” activity. As for the professional level of the works, it was rather high, believes Expert Jury Chair Tatiana Voiteleva.
The Internet component of the festival is complete but the live round is still ahead. In the first week of June a series of events await the nominees in Moscow: versatile contests in Russian, master classes, discussions and meetings with prominent writers. The finals will be held on the Day of Russian Language, June 6, on the stage of Maly Theatre.
Boris Serov
