By Victoria Melkonyan
Maria Yunger, a Russian émigré with two school-age children, has been living in Armenia for over two years. She sent her children to Armenia in March 2022, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and then she fled Russia to join them a month later. In Yerevan, political apprehensions were at the forefront when choosing a new school for her children.
“All of these Russian-Armenian schools… are controlled by Russia in one way or another. And we did not want to be linked to Russia in any way,” she told CivilNet over the phone.
Yunger’s concerns regarding the nature of Russian schools in Armenia are far from unfounded, especially given the legacy of politicized education in the region.
To push Russification in Soviet Armenia, authorities instituted an educational hierarchy, in which attending a Russian-language school gave students greater access to prestigious institutions and higher-paying careers.
During the Soviet period, citizens could choose to send their children to Russian or Armenian language schools. Russian language schools gave almost all lessons in Russian, while Armenian language schools used Armenian as the predominant language of instruction but mandated Russian lessons for all students.
After Armenia declared independence, Armenian was legally enshrined as the national language of education in the country, meaning that foreign language schools were effectively banned for Armenian students. Russian is still, however, a mandatory course in all Armenian language public schools.
National minorities, stateless persons, and those with at least one non-citizen parent were also guaranteed the right to education in their native language, meaning that the children of Russian residents of Armenia have access to Russian language classes or schools.
In 2010, the Ministry of Education and Science presented an amendment that would repeal the ban on foreign language schools that had existed since Armenia declared independence. It was met with large-scale protests from many Armenians who expressed fear that the move would undermine national identity and allow foreign actors to exercise undue influence in Armenia.
As Armenians objected to measures to broaden foreign language education, Russian authorities publicly advocated for the passage of the amendment.
“Our newspapers have been arguing that the main target of the non-adoption of the law is the Russian, rather than, say, English language,” stated Nikolai Ryzhkov, former Soviet Premier and then-co-chairman of a Russian-Armenian inter-parliamentary commission, in 2010. The Russian government commonly levies this rhetoric in all former Soviet Republics that attempt to emphasize native language fluency. Moscow views the loss of Russian fluency in the region as a political and cultural blow.
After heavy revisions, the amendment was signed into law in December 2010, permitting the establishment of up to 11 foreign-language schools for Armenian as well as non-Armenian students. Yerevan State University professor Serob Khachatryan, who specializes in education research, told CivilNet that the law was changed primarily to allow for the opening of UWC Dilijan, an international school that is part of the United World Colleges system.
“The creation [of UWC Dilijan] was important for Armenia. It brought a higher level of education to Armenia, which both Armenian students—the student population is about 10% Armenian students—and Armenian teachers could take advantage of… Armenian schools could adopt elements of [UWC Dilijan’s] process,” he says.
The flood of Russian migration into Armenia after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought the issue of foreign language education to the forefront once again, providing the Kremlin another opportunity to push the opening of Russian language schools in Armenia. Now, the Armenian government must balance the complexities of providing appropriate educational infrastructure to new Russian residents while preserving their stance on the spread of foreign language education in the country.
Integration Challenges
Yunger eventually decided to enroll her children in Yerevan’s bilingual “Free School,” where lessons are primarily given in Russian and English, but Armenian is compulsory. Yunger feels strongly that her children should learn Armenian.
“We live in the country, of course, it is necessary to know Armenian… we knew that we would stay for a while, so our children are learning,” she tells CivilNet.
However, according to Yunger, Armenian language pedagogy is still in a developmental phase. She stated to CivilNet that there is a dearth of high-quality teaching materials designed for those who are learning Armenian as a foreign language. This lack, in tandem with other factors such as poor language immersion, is a significant obstacle to integration.
“The state doesn’t really care about this seriously and doesn’t control the integration process in any way,” notes Yunger. “The trouble here is that you don’t have to immerse [yourself]. Almost everyone understands Russian or English, and [learning Armenian] is somehow not imperative.”
Tatiana Zhestkova, another Russian émigré, expressed similar concerns about language integration. Zhestkova’s husband fled Russia after the 2022 partial mobilization order, and she arrived with their child in October 2023. Her child, now in fourth grade, attends the private Nyberg School, the Yerevan counterpart of a Russian school located in Moscow.
“On the one hand, there are a lot of [Russian language schools]; that is, even in ordinary schools, there are classes given in Russian. But when we arrived, there were no available places anywhere,” Zhestkova tells CivilNet over Zoom. “Perhaps it has become easier now, given that there’s been an outflow of migrants recently.”
At the Nyberg School, Armenian is an optional subject, but Zhestkova, like Yunger, feels her children should learn the language so that they can integrate better. However, she noted that there are few opportunities for Russian émigrés, particularly children, to engage in cultural and language exchanges with locals.
“Maybe [we could have] some language courses for children that are larger in scale… events where children will get to know each other,” said Zhestkova. “It seems to me that [the current measures] are not enough. When you study in a private school, you essentially live in an isolated world.” She and her children, Zhestkova explained, only interact with other Russian immigrants.
Recent Developments
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Armenia welcomed hundreds of thousands of émigrés, stretching the capacity of the existing schools with Russian classes for national minorities and children of non-citizens. By early 2023, 65,000 Russians had moved to Armenia with the intention to stay for at least 2-3 years. A significant portion of the migrants have young children, whose education is a pressing concern for parents attempting to integrate.
This drastic pressure on the system has exposed the political character of educational infrastructure in Armenia as well as the difficulty of cultivating native-language pedagogy more than thirty years after the USSR’s dissolution.
In more recent years, Russian authorities have renewed their push for the opening of new Russian schools in Armenia. In 2021, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the Armenian government had expressed interest in joining a Kremlin initiative and opening new Russian-language schools, which Armenian authorities categorically denied.
Undeterred, Chairman of the Duma Vyacheslav Volodin discussed “the issue of the Russian language in Armenia” and Russian language schools for Armenian students in Russia’s Federal Assembly only a year later.
In December 2022, following the peak of Russian migration into Armenia, the two governments formed a working group to discuss the issue of new Russian schools; however, their independent messaging has remained contradictory.
In Khachatryan’s view, while unique developments such as the establishment of UWC Dilijan might have a positive influence on Armenia’s educational infrastructure, the risks of foreign language schools—Russian or English—are too great to bear, especially given Armenia’s position as a comparatively small power on the world stage. As more geopolitically relevant languages gain momentum worldwide, advanced fluency in Armenian may decrease.
“We need to preserve our mother tongue,” Khachtryan told CivilNet. “It is very important for our schools to continue teaching in Armenian.”
The irony of this conviction is that many other small nations, from Lebanon to Finland, have the same concern, but address it differently. In Lebanon, schools teach at least three languages, and often four. In Finland, at least three, and often more. While Armenian schools also teach in at least three languages, fears of the native language receding and memories of Soviet-era educational hierarchies have led to broad skepticism of foreign-language schools — even when they bring educational benefits to Armenia, as in the case of UWC Dilijan.
So, the question remains: How best should educational bodies in Armenia meet the needs of future generations? By focusing on the national language to the exclusion of others, or by encouraging multilingual education, from the perspective that foreign-language education is not always detrimental to national identity? Neither the Education Ministry nor parents have addressed this bigger question, which is tied to Armenia’s unique history of education.
With additional reporting by Sonya Dymova.
