Interest/Motivation

What is interesting about Russian to me?

Orthodox Christianity

Many writings have now been translated, but experiencing content in its original language is cool.

A Non-Western Internet

Along with Chinese, Russian is a major Internet language. European languages like French, German, and Spanish are used on many of the same websites that English is used on. Russia, like China, has held hostile positions towards "the West" and has developed its own Interwebs.

Since 1995, Russians have consistently held positive views of China. As of September 2018, 75% of Russians view China favorably, with only 13% expressing a negative opinion. According to a 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center, 71% of Russians have a favorable view of China, with 18% expressing an unfavorable view. Similarly, a YouGov survey found that 71% of the Chinese think Russia has a positive effect on world affairs, while 15% view it negatively.

I'm curious to see how the Russian internet compares to the Western and Chinese internets.

The Eurasian Landmass

Geographically, Russia sits above China, and has historically had contact (including much conflict) with the nations of East Asia.

The "Dark Side"

Russian often gets a bad reputation in the United States (e.g. "Russian collusion"; in contrast, have you heard about "Japanese collusion"?!). One of the reasons I'm motivated to study Russian is that many people I tend to disagree with on matters of opinion often have an... instinctive dislike for Russian.

Research

Russians have done a lot of linguistics and philology (see Wikipedia's list of Russian Linguists and Philologists. Much Russian language research remains untranslated.