Article: The East Looks West.(Russia)(why the former Soviet republics prefer to study English than Russian)

Byline: Owen Matthews; With Anna Nemtsova In Tbilisi

The Kremlin may act triumphant, but Russia is losing its hold on the youth of former Soviet states.

It's been more than a century since a member of the Mebagishvili family of Tbilisi, Georgia, grew up not speaking Russian. Like educated clans all over the Russian Empire, the Mebagishvilis considered the language of Pushkin and Tolstoy essential for anyone who wanted to get ahead--or to be considered fully civilized. But 20-year-old Helen Mebagishvili, a philosophy and social-science student at Tbilisi's Ilia Chavchavadze State University, has chosen English, not Russian, as her first foreign language. ...

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