WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Carmel Institute of Russian Culture and History director Anton Fedyashin told Sputnik also said that several of their peers prepare to study there.
"Next summer we will be sending eight American students on Carmel Institute Awards to study in Russia during the summer and 10 more students, most of them with Carmel Institute Awards, to travel to Russia with me and explore the cultural legacy of 1917 during a very important anniversary," Fedyashin said.
The 10-day trip, coinciding with the centenary of a groundbreaking time in Russian and world history, will focus on studying the cultural impact of the two revolutions: the February-March revolt that replaced Tsar Nicholas II with a provisional Russian government and its November overthrow, led by Vladimir Lenin, that set the stage for the founding of the Soviet Union.
"We will be visiting history museums to look at the conditions that led to the revolutions," Fedyashin said, listing the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg as well as Moscow’s Tretyakov art gallery and Russian Museum. "We will be going to concerts during the White Nights festival in St. Petersburg at the Mariinsky [Theater], and to several theaters in Moscow because there will be musical performances of 20th-century Russian music."
The American University students will also visit sites such as Moscow’s Sparrow Hills district, where Lenin spent his final weeks before dying in January 1924.
Fedyashin said the other group of AU students, who are heading to Russia with grant funding, will be ensconced at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, the Higher School of Economics or another study program of their choice. American University was the first school in the Washington area to establish direct student exchanges with both Russian institutions.
"We just started that program last year, having begun with two students — one American, one Russian — going in opposite directions. We are now at six this semester, which is a huge improvement."
"Part of what has accounted for that increase is that the Carmel Institute has started granting awards to Russian students to come over and study at AU. And so, we are offering free awards for this coming spring to students from the Higher School of Economics, and we expect them to be full," Fedyashin concluded.
The Carmel Institute was established within the AU College of Arts and Sciences by philanthropist and businesswoman Susan Carmel Lehrman.
