The XV Congress of the International Association of Teachers of the Russian Language and Literature (MAPRYAL) “Russian language and literature in the changing world” was held between 12 and 16 September. Among the participants of the even were Head of the Department of Russian as a Foreign Language at the Institute of International Education of VSU Yulia Zhidkova, Associate Professor of the Department of Public Relations, Advertising, and Design of the Faculty of Journalism of VSU Sergey Popov, Associate Professor of the Department of Publishing of the Faculty of Philology Tatyana Yarovaya, Associate Professor of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics of the Faculty of the Romance and Germanic Philology Olga Donina, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian Literature of XX–XXI Centuries, Theory of Literature, and Humanities of the Faculty of Philology Elena Kuydina. All in all, over 500 delegates from 63 countries of the world took part in the congress. Russia hosted the MAPRYAL Congress for the first time in 20 years and St. Petersburg became the capital of the congress for the second time in the history of this international scientific event.
The main event of the MAPRYAL Congress was the opening ceremony, which was held on 13 September in the atrium of the General Staff Building of the State Hermitage Museum. President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, the Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov, Head of Rossotrudnichestvo Evgeniy Primakov, Rector of Moscow State University Viktor Sadovnichy, and other officials welcomed the participants of the congress. The official video greeting sent from the International Space Station by Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokofiev, Dmitry Petelin, and Konstantin Borisov was also a memorable and emotional moment of the opening ceremony. The cosmonauts said that the Russian language is the language of cooperation and friendship between cosmonauts and astronauts from different countries who work together every day on board the ISS.
The ceremony also included reports on the main areas of modern Russian studies, revealing various aspects of how the Russian language functions in the modern world. The rector of St. Petersburg State University Nikolay Kropachev devoted his speech to the issue of consolidating the standards of the Russian language as the state language in standard dictionaries as well as reference and grammar books. Tatyana Chernigovskaya, Head of the Institute for Cognitive Studies at St. Petersburg State University, famous scientist in the field of psycholinguistics and neuroscience, presented a report “Language and the Brain: the XXI century”, and talked about the phenomena of language ability and language functions and also about the combinations of genes responsible for the process of speech generation and perception.
“Language is not so much a means of communication as a thinking tool, it is an exquisite and very fine tool that we use to think,” said Tatyana Chernigovskaya.
The famous Russian writer Evgeniy Vodolazkin, author of the world-famous novel “Laurus”, shared his thoughts on myth as an active attitude to the phenomenon with the participants of the congress in his report “St. Petersburg: the reality of myth”. The writer revealed the idea of myth as an active attitude to the phenomenon.
“Sometimes the myth can express the core of the matter more accurately than reality, it is not a substitution of truth with fiction, it is just an attempt to express the truth with other means,” said Evgeniy Vodolazkin.
The congress also offered reports by authoritative scientists, leaders of national associations of Russian language teachers, as well as teachers of Russian and international universities. A total of 420 reports were made in 13 research areas, including a systemic and structural description of the modern Russian language, sociolinguistic features of its study, lingodidactics, lexicography, literary studies, and comparative studies.
Yulia Zhidkova, Head of the Department of Russian as a Foreign Language at the Institute of International Education of Voronezh State University, made a report “Methodological basis for a course on the scientific style of speech in the humanities”, Sergey Popov, Associate Professor of the Department of Public Relations, Advertising, and Design from the Faculty of Journalism, Voronezh University, presented a report “On the role of “Toponymic martyrology of the Russian Federation” in the lexicographic description of now-vanished proper names”. As part of the implementation of a grant from the Russian Science Foundation, the lecturer studied a special type of onomastic dictionary created in collaboration with Elvira Parkhots, lecturer from the Faculty of Philology, “Toponymic martyrology of the Russian Federation” which will allow taking a new look at the lexicographic description of now-vanished proper names. He indicated the main reasons for the disappearance of the names of geographical objects (renaming due to ideology or the dissonance of names, due to merging, accession, separation, or division of settlements, as well as the liquidation of settlements as prescribed by law), presented the structure of the future dictionary of vanished Russian toponyms, and showed an example of a dictionary entry.
The congress also featured poster presentations by Tatyana Yarovaya, Associate Professor of the Department of Publishing from the VSU Faculty of Philology, titled “Development and promotion of the Russian language in China: specifics, dynamics, prospects” (together with Sun Yumin, Associate Professor of Zaozhuang University of the People’s Republic of China), by Olga Donina, Associate Professor of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics of the VSU Faculty of the Romance and Germanic Philology, and her student Nadezhda Olefir titled “Specific features of political media texts (through the examples of talk show analysis)”, and by Elena Kuidina, Associate Professor of the Department of Russian literature of the XX–XXI Centuries, Theory of Literature, and Humanities of the VSU Faculty of Philology, titled “Teaching international students to express requests in Russian”.
The final events of the congress took place in the historical Duma Hall of the Tavrida Palace (Interparliamentary Assembly of the CIS Member Nations). The panel discussion titled “The content of teaching the Russian language: how to respond to social orders” brought a lot of interested reactions.
Traditionally, a meeting of the highest governing body of MAPRYAL, the General Assembly, was also held as part of the congress. At this meeting, the president of the association, Vladimir Tolstoy, was elected for the period until 2027 as well as the presidium, which included representatives of Russia, Azerbaijan, Argentina, Belarus, Bulgaria, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Romania, Senegal, USA, Tunisia, Turkey, Czech Republic, and Sweden. It was also decided to hold the next 2027 MAPRYAL Congress in the People's Republic of China.
The “Russian language and literature in the changing world” Congress was held by MAPRYAL and St. Petersburg State University and supported by Ministry of Enlightenment of the Russian Federation, the Russian World foundation, the State Hermitage Museum, and the Interparliamentary Assembly of the CIS Member Nations.
