Every year on June 6th, Russian Language Day celebrates the seventh most spoken language in the world. The day also honors Aleksandr Pushkin, a Russian poet who is considered the father of modern Russian literature.
There are over 150 million native speakers of Russian in the world making it the most spoken language in Europe. There are also about 113 million non-native Russian speakers. Altogether, there are 267 million people in the world who speak Russian.
Considered a Slavic language, Russian is the official language of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Besides these countries, Russian is the primary language of former Soviet countries. These countries include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia, and Tajikistan. There are also numerous Russian speakers in the United States, Israel, China, Poland, and Finland.
One of the goals of this program is to maintain the equality of all six official languages of the UN: English, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, Russian and French. The decision to hold language days was taken by the Department of Public Information (now the Department of Global Communications) on the eve of International Mother Language Day , celebrated annually on February 21 at the initiative of UNESCO.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) founded Russian Language Day in 2010. Their goal is to celebrate multilingualism and promote equal use of the UN’s six official languages. UNESCO chose June 6th to commemorate Aleksandr Pushkin’s birthday. The famous Russian poet, playwright, and novelist was born on June 6th, 1799 in Moscow.
Source: www.un.org
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