The NRU BSU Peoples’ Friendship Centre celebrates Pushkin’s birthday anniversary

The attendants of the conference were students of BSU from Syria, Ecuador, Colombia, Morocco, Iraq, Egypt, China, Angola, Cameroon, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Chad, Senegal, Jordan, Bolivia and Russia, as well as the students from Belgorod Institute of Food Sciences at Dezhou University and Belgorod Industrial College. They all gathered at the Peoples’ Friendship Centre and at the online conference at Yandex Telemost to talk about the Russian language, read some poems by Alexander Pushkin and other poets dedicated to the most recognizable Russian poet.

Natalia Zhukovskaya, Director of the Department of International Cooperation of the NRU BSU, welcomed the participants of the meeting.

“Russian language is one of the most widely-distributed languages in the world. I congratulate all of us on the International Day of the Russian Language! We are glad and grateful that out of hundreds and thousands of languages on the planet you have chosen the Russian language to study and get higher education. Good luck to you in mastering the language in which the great world-famous poet, playwright, prose writer, publicist Alexander Pushkin wrote” – Natalia Yurievna addressed the audience.

The joint arrangers of the event were the NRU BSU Nikolai Nikolayevich Strakhov Academic Library and the Belgorod State Universal Science Library, which has a long and highly productive cooperation with our university. Zhanna Kukhtina, the head of the Department of Foreign Languages Literature, and Ivan Govorishchev, a member of the Department, a graduate of ICCIR of NRU BSU and a lecturer of the Regional Public Library ‘Znanie’ have also attended the meeting. They told the participants of the meeting what languages the great poet spoke, what foreign languages words are found in his works and have merged into Russian language thanks to Alexander Pushkin. In addition, having shared one of the ‘world conspiracy theories’ that Alexander Pushkin and Alexander Dumas are the same person, they added a touch of humour to their speech.

Olga Sushkova, a staff member of the NRU BSU Nikolai Nikolayevich Strakhov Academic Library, introduced the participants of the meeting with the most important facts from the life and works of Alexander Pushkin and conducted a short tour of the book exhibition ‘Great Poet – Great Russia’.

Olga Lyutova, Acting Director of the Peoples’ Friendship Centre and the moderator of the meeting in the Literary Salon, spoke about the history of poems, novels and novellas, excerpts from which were declaimed by the students in Russian and some foreign languages. Finishing off the meeting, the participants declaimed poems by Andrey Dementiev and Sergey Yesenin dedicated to Alexander Pushkin.

The meeting at the Peoples’ Friendship Centre, however, did not put end to the celebrations of the International Day of the Russian Language and Alexander Pushkin’s 225^th birthday anniversary. On Saturday, 8 June, at 14:00 the meeting of the club ‘In the World of Cinema: Watch Films, Study Russian Language’ will take place. The participants will watch and discuss films and cartoons based on the works of the great poet. Admission is free!