Russian on the rise among students.

• Position: YOUR LIFE - Brief article

Russian language studies are rebounding even as current events attract more students to Arabic and Spanish, says a language professor at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind.

"Learning languages, especially Russian, is often motivated by what is happening politically and economically around the world," notes Zinaida Breschinsky, associate professor of Russian, who has been teaching at Purdue for 30 years.

That is why Arabic language programs are seeing their enrollments increase since 9/11, and interest in Spanish continues with the growing native-speaking population in the U.S., she indicates.

"In the 1990s, as the fall of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War, followed by the chaotic years of Pres. Boris Yeltsin, the number of students learning Russian was the lowest I had ever seen," Breschinsky recalls. "In the last eight years, the number has been increasing."

Breschinsky maintains that there are two reasons students today...