Nothing was more important to Tolstoy than character development. For him, the purpose of life is to grow morally. The purpose of literature -- as all art -- is to aid that growth. Abstract philosophy and pedantic scholarship are therefore redundant. Indeed, even the psychological novel is a distraction. Moral truths are self-evident. They are…

Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote masterpieces describing the exploitation and victimisation of the socially disadvantaged who were affected by industrialisation in the 19th century. In "The Brothers Karamazov," Pavel Fyodorovich Smerdyakov (hereafter, Smerdyakov) plays a critical role in various spheres of the story. His birth was the result of…

The article examines the current situation of language instruction in higher educational institutions in the Republic of Kazakhstan. Higher educational institutions play a crucial role in providing professional training in the country. The official language strategy focuses on developing the Kazakh language as the language of science. The…

This article examines how Russian speakers in Ireland delimit and describe (their/the) Russian language in relation to representations of standard Russian. It is based on analysis of discussions conducted between speakers of Russian living in Ireland, facilitated by the Our Languages (2008-2011) research project, investigating multilingualism and…

Kazakhstan's decision to transition its Kazakh language from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet has serious implications for language policy, communication, education, inclusion, and social cohesion. This critical qualitative study, underpinned by a discourse-historical approach, employs critical discourse analysis to analyze statements of…

The paper traces the level of bilingualism in several highland villages of Daghestan (Northeast Caucasus) through the twentieth century. We show that historically, men were more multilingual than women, but this was not true to the same extent for all languages. Highlanders' repertoires suggest a correlation between the social function of the…

Language education and schooling are important topics in post-conflict contexts. This study explores the existing situation of mother tongue education in the de facto Abkhazia. The study had the following research questions: (1) What was the ethnic composition of Abkhazia during the Soviet Union, and how Russian occupation changed it? (2) How well…

Based on oral and written testimony of pupils and teachers, this essay examines the lived educational experience of the school-age cohort of children in Stalin's Russia from 1931 to 1945. The state alone determined the structure and curricula of the nation's schools. However, Soviet youngsters, their parents, and teachers responded to the center's…

The present paper is a case study of how the commodification of the Russian language has transformed a market in New Delhi, India, inaugurated in 1969 and known as Yashwant Place. Over the years, the market slowly assumed a new identity, referred to as Yashka not only by Russian visitors but also tourists from countries of the former Soviet Union,…

English has gained in popularity as the world's lingua franca, inviting individuals and countries to join the international community. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the use of English has dramatically increased in Turkmenistan, in Central Asia (CA). Russian was required for securing jobs, professional development, and economic well-being…

In 1937, Soviet Koreans from the Far East were forcibly relocated by Stalin to Central Asia. This narrative of expulsion and deportation is used to explain the residence of Koreans in present-day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and the Kyrgyz Republic. First, this article maps out the historical backdrop that has broadly shaped the Kazakhstani Korean…

Public education systems in Europe were created in the course of the foundation of the 'classical' nation state in the 18th and 19th centuries. Historical analyses show that it was part of their destiny to contribute to the consolidation of the respective states' national self-design. In the 19th century, the myth developed that a nation state is…

The objective of the study is to analyze the activities of the North Caucasian deputies of the third-convocation State Duma of the Russian Empire in addressing issues of education and national culture. The people's deputies were focusing on the most relevant and vital questions of the Russian reality: democratization of political life, the problem…

This study investigates "de facto" language policy in Estonia. It investigates how language choices at the micro (or individual) level are negotiated within the macro (or social and historical) context: how official language policy and other features of the discursive environment surrounding language and its use in Estonia translate into…

The article analyzes the constituent steps and measures of the Soviet campaign to eradicate illiteracy among adults in the 1920s-30s. A comparison of educational and ideological aspects of this campaign demonstrates how closely they were interrelated and how they facilitated the creation of new patterns of cultural behavior. The author shows that…