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Text of a telegram from NAS President Frank Press to President A.P. Aleksandrov and the officers of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. April 8, 1986

"The members of the National Academy of Sciences have requested that the following message be sent to their colleagues in the Academy of Sciences of the

U.S.S.R.:

We take this occasion of renewed scientific exchanges between our academies to ask for your individual and collective help in bringing about a substantial amelioration of the situation of Academician Andrei Sakharov, who is also our foreign associate. Common efforts on behalf of Andrei Sakharov and the

rights of all scientists to pursue their work freely would improve the climate for scientific exchanges and greatly facilitate other cooperative efforts."

APPENDIX 3B(2)

A Brief Study of
Russian Language Education
In the United States

"We shall know each other or exterminate each other."

-- Carlos Fuentes

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

-- H.G. Wells

"The US. can be characterized as the home of the brave, and the land of the monolingual."

Institute for Soviet-American Relations
1608 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009

(202) 387-3034

July 1986

-- Rose Hayden

An ISAR Publication
Prepared by

Margaret West

Russian Language Education in the United States

This report is intended to provide a brief overview of Russian language education in the United States. The information provided includes every level of our civilian educational system, but excludes Russsian language training provided as part of United States military or defense programs. The word "Russian" is used to mean specifically the Russian language and not as an umbrella term to include other Slavic or Eastern European languages. Russian is by far the most important of more than a hundred official languages of the Soviet Union.

The following facts summarize Russian language education in the United States:

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There are more teachers of English in the Soviet Union than there are students of Russian in the United States.

At a college level Russian ranks fifth in foreign language studies after
Spanish, French, German and Italian, with 30,386 students studying
Russian in 1983 (3.6% of total foreign language enrollments). Percentage
change between 1968 (high point) and 1983: -25.3%.

Number of college students studying Soviet languages other than Russian
in 1983: 3,099.

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Total number of high school students studying Russian: 5,000. One out of five American high school students studies a foreign language (cf. five out of five Soviet high school age counterparts).

Although there has been a great change in the roles of the United States and Soviet Union since World War II, with the emergence of these countries as superpowers, there has been little change in the extent of Russian language education in the United States. The Sputnik-induced increase of the sixties proved to be brief as enrollments dropped after reaching a record high point in 1968.

At the height of the post-Sputnik scramble to catch up with the Russians in space technology, additional funds were earmarked for foreign language training. This increased funding led to the high point in Russian language studies, with a record 35,000 high school students enrolled in Russian language courses in 1965. In 1968 there were 40,69% college students studying Russian. By the late 1960s all that had changed. Greater relevancy was demanded in education and foreign language requirements in general suffered, with enrollments falling once again. The proportion of high school students studying a foreign language fell from 24% in 1965 to 15% in 1983.

While foreign language education in the United States was not changing, the larger context was changing dramatically. More sophisticated transportation and communication systems were making the world effectively shrink. Prior to World War II, imports and exports accounted for less than 5% of the United States' Gross National Product, but by 1979 they accounted for 22%. In 1983 one in six Americans owed his job to international trade and one in every three acres of United States farmland produced for export. Historically, the vast size of the United States and her rich resources permitted a degree of self-sufficiency compatible with isolationist and protectionist policies. Changes occurred internally and externally that made global interdependence a reality. Learning foreign languages had become a survival skill rather than an educational luxury, and this realization came late.

As it became increasingly apparent that the United States was at a severe disadvantage, if not at risk, because of this deficit in foreign language expertise, a Presidential Committee was appointed in 1978 to study the problem. The Committee reported in 1979 that "Americans' incompetence in foreign languages" was "nothing short of scandalous." The Report had the effect of focusing attention on the declining number of students enrolling in foreign language courses and on the consequences

of that decline. Since the Presidential Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies Report was issued in 1979 there has been more widespread recognition that lack of foreign language expertise on the part of U.S. citizens makes the United States less competitive in international business and hampers our efforts in diplomacy and national defense. The United States is the only industrialized country without a universal foreign language requirement in its high schools and the only country where one can graduate from college without having had one year of foreign language prior to or during university years.

While the advantages of foreign language expertise benefit the United States generally there are important additional reasons for increasing Russian language expertise. What was seen as a national scandal with reference to the lack of expertise in foreign languages generally, was seen as a national danger with reference to the lack of Russian language expertise. The fate of the earth rests with two superpowers. Understanding and communication between the superpowers are essential to global survival and language, as the heart of culture, is the key to such communication. Americans are almost wholly ignorant of the language in which their chief adversary thinks. Soviet citizens have a much greater degree of fluency in English but have less access to publications and less freedom to travel. The effect, limited intercultural contact, is the same, although the causes are different. The Soviets have long recognized the political and social benefits of proficiencies in foreign languages and their success today with foreign language instruction has frequently given them the inside track in relationships with developing nations. Clearly the United States can no longer afford to sit back.

As a consequence of the 1979 Presidential Report, the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), the major professional organization concerned with Slavic Studies in this country, organized a National Committee on Russian Language Study. Their 1983 report emphasizes the vulnerable position of the US. as a result of relatively few Americans studying Russian:

Our entire national capability to analyze the other Superpower is eroding.

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