Prominent Russian linguist, the person behind establishment of the Pushkin State Russian Language Institute and its first principle Vitaly Kostomarov recently celebrated his 90th birthday. However he does not quit his scientific researches. The scientist told the Russkiy Mir why Russian continues to be one of the most successful languages in the world and how the Soviet leaders facilitated the fact that we continue to speak the language created by Pushkin and Karamzin two centuries ago.

Turkan Oldjay, a Chair professor of Russian language and literature at Istanbul University, believes that the most important task in studying Russian language at the present stage is mastering not only the language system, but also history, literature and culture of the Russian people. We talked with the scholar researching Russian-Turkish cultural relations about Russian émigrés in Turkey, translations of Russian literature into Turkish, and how much Russian language and Russian culture are in demand in Turkey today.