The Russian Political Mindset in the Context of War: An Exploration with Alexander Baunov

Overview

This five-hour active learning course, built around our exclusive interview with the editor in chief of Carnegie Politika, Alexander Baunov, will help enhance your Russian language skills while challenging you to think deeply about critical current issues and events. 

This noncredit course is adapted from content created by the Monterey Initiative in Russian Studies (MIRS).

Learn Online on Your Schedule

The Russian Political Mindset is a fully online and self-paced course, giving you total freedom to study from anywhere in the world, whenever you want.

Curriculum

What you will learn:

• Russian historical and cultural facts, including the ways Russian history shapes national identity
• Russian vocabulary related to discourse about the notion of national heroism
• The historical pantheon of old and new Russian national heroes 
• Historical interpretations of Russian military history
• The role of military history in forming national historical narratives in different countries

This Course Is for You If …

This course is ideal if you have high-intermediate Russian language skills and want to improve your listening ability while challenging yourself to think deeply about critical current issues, such as how interpretations of Russian history are used in building a national discourse; how education leads to the formation of national values; what gives meaning to national discourse; and how national discourse provides citizens with a sense of pride and security. 

Whether you are a Russian scholar, language learner, policy expert, or simply interested in the subject matter, you’ll gain insights from these discussions while improving your Russian language skills.

Course Specifics

• Type / Modality: Online
• Estimated completion time: 5–7 hours
• Number of modules: 6
• Language of instruction: Russian
• Activities and content: Video and audio recordings, thematic lists of vocabulary words, small texts for training, prelistening and postlistening exercises, and a knowledge check exercise that you can take as many times as you like. 
• Technical prerequisites: A networked computer is required, as is the capability to download content and stream multimedia audio and video, and to keyboard text in Russian with the Cyrillic alphabet.
• Completion rewards: After you successfully complete this course, you’ll earn a certificate of completion and a badge to share on your social media profiles.

Cost

• Registration Price: $20
• Limited Time Discounted Price: $15
• Middlebury Institute Admitted Students: Students admitted to our master’s degree programs can register for free; check your MIcommunity admitted students group for more info!
• Middlebury Institute Current Students, Faculty, Staff: Register for free.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about the course, please contact proed@middlebury.edu.

For more Russian policy and language content, visit the Monterey Initiative in Russian Studies.