Oxford University Russian Society
Russian Studies in the UK dates from the 19th century, when it was introduced first at Oxford (1869), then at Cambridge (1889). Since then, the relative health of the field has fluctuated in correspondence with the state of the United Kingdom's relations with Russia.
The Oxford University Russian Society was founded in the Oxford University in 1909 by Prince Felix Yusupov, then a student at the University College, Oxford, in order to promote links between Russia and the University. Almost a hundred years onwards, the society continues to espouse the same values with cultural events and talks by well-known and influential figures. It is not affiliated with any political party or movement, which allows it to host political speakers of great diversity.
The Russian Society currently numbers around 900 members. The aims of the society are to unite compatriots in Oxford, to promote Russian language and culture, and to support Russian-speaking students who wish to study in Oxford. In order to realise these aims, the Russian Society regularly holds many events, such as screening Russian films, organising conversational lunches, holding Russian celebrations and concerts, organising lectures by famous politicians and prominent cultural figures from Russia and other countries on the topics related to contemporary Russian politics and culture.
The website of the Oxford University Russian Society is listed in the British Library's Guide to Slavonic and East European internet resources.
Read more about Oxford University Russian Society: External Links
Famous quotes containing the words oxford university, oxford, university, russian and/or society:
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)
“The greatest gift that Oxford gives her sons is, I truly believe, a genial irreverence toward learning, and from that irreverence love may spring.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)
“Television ... helps blur the distinction between framed and unframed reality. Whereas going to the movies necessarily entails leaving one’s ordinary surroundings, soap operas are in fact spatially inseparable from the rest of one’s life. In homes where television is on most of the time, they are also temporally integrated into one’s “real” life and, unlike the experience of going out in the evening to see a show, may not even interrupt its regular flow.”
—Eviatar Zerubavel, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life, ch. 5, University of Chicago Press (1991)
“An enormously vast field lies between “God exists” and “there is no God.” The truly wise man traverses it with great difficulty. A Russian knows one or the other of these two extremes, but is not interested in the middle ground. He usually knows nothing, or very little.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The basic thing nobody asks is why do people take drugs of any sort?... Why do we have these accessories to normal living to live? I mean, is there something wrong with society that’s making us so pressurized, that we cannot live without guarding ourselves against it?”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)