HSE Moscow offers Russian language instruction throughout the year. If you’re interested in improving your Russian (or starting from scratch), we’re sure you’ll find a programme that matches your level and goals.
How It Works
Applications are processed on a rolling basis and can be submitted at any time
Within two weeks of receiving your application, we will send an acknowledgment of receipt
If you do not hear from us within two weeks of sending, please contact International Admissions
Russian Language Courses
Educational Programmes
Administration
Olga Eremina
School Head
oeremina@hse.ru
Anastasia Zinchenko
Deputy Head
azinchenko@hse.ru
Student Voices
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Zhang Weichi (China)
If I were to rate the course, I would give it a 100 out of 10, as the reality exceeded my expectations tenfold. There were so many memorable moments!We could openly share our thoughts on any topic. Working with extensive and specialized texts helped me realize the true value of the classes. We analyzed complex materials on politics, international relations, medicine, and charity—vocabulary that international students rarely encounter.My experience in three words: pleasant, rewarding, and delicious.
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Evan Partidas (USA)
I found out about the Russian language courses at HSE University from my study abroad coordinator. What I enjoy most about this course is the interactive and inspiring atmosphere. The professor makes the classes engaging and effective, motivating us to unlock our full potential and sharing personal insights into the culture.My experience in three words: challenging, rewarding, and engaging.
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Ha Juae (South Korea)
On the recommendation of my research advisor, I enrolled in the courses offered by the School of Russian as a Foreign Language. I need Russian both for daily life and for my academic work. The classes are incredibly helpful, especially since I had never studied in Russia before. The professor introduces us to the formal style of speech and deeply immerses us in the context of Russian culture. I fully trust our instructor; her background in literature and journalism makes her a true master of the written word.
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Adelina Drauschke (Germany)
I learned about the courses from my program manager, who told me who to contact to take the language proficiency test. I found all the necessary information on the website of the School of Russian as a Foreign Language. Our professor chose relevant and engaging topics. Most importantly, I could immediately apply the knowledge I gained in real life. Thanks to the course, I started to fully understand the news for the first time, both in text and audio formats. Russian is now crucial for my future career as a diplomat. I feel much more confident when speaking Russian, especially with my friends and family.
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Boris Senin Caruallanki Parian (Peru)
My experience was amazing because at the end of the course I was able to talk to the teachers, friends, other Russian people. I remember that we had very interactive classes where we all had the opportunity to talk. We also had various activities where we could visit historical places. We could also participate in various clubs, such as film club, theater club and others. I participated in the theater club. This experience was very useful for me because I had to speak only Russian and memorize various dialogues, which helped me speak Russian better. I would highly recommend you to take Russian lessons here, you will love it!
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Jonathan Pionati (USA)
I studied at level 4. I really enjoyed the Russian language course at HSE, and especially the teacher Anna! She is the best Russian language teacher in the world! The course was exciting, fun and taught us a lot. The focus on grammar and the discussion format of the classes were especially useful. I would recommend this course to anyone!
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Ingrid Mulyono (Indonesia)
I studied Russian from the very beginning, starting with the alphabet. Taking Russian classes was really helpful for me living and communicating in Russia. I highly recommend these classes to students or expats who want to start learning or improve their Russian.
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Jiho Chang (South Korea)
The courses were very useful for me. Thanks to them, I was able to expand my knowledge significantly. I learned the correct expressions and developed my speaking skills. It was completely different from how I studied Russian in Korea. Here, I felt more interested and became more active. I recommend Russian language courses at the Higher School of Economics to those who want to study Russian in Moscow, because they have a very good teaching system and interesting course content.
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Szép Regő (Hungary)
I took part in the Russian language course at HSE. My teacher was Mariya, and I found her way of teaching to be really effective. I had little to no experience before, and with the course I learnt a lot about grammatical concepts, useful vocabulary about Russia, Moscow and its wonderful Metro system, about cultures, holidays and life in general. I really liked how thoroughly we dove deep into each topic, and due to this the course gave me great general understanding of the language. Mariya emphasized the importance of speaking practice, which helped with my pronunciation. I had some difficulty adapting to the language, but with each class it became easier and my confusion cleared up. I can only recommend Mariya and the course, and I’m really thankful for her work!
Publications
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Book
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Article
Men and women are from the same planet Gender similarities in perspective-taking abilities
The study examines emotional responses to words representing a wide range of psychological valence and focuses on gender-related differences. We aimed to find out whether men and women differ in their emotional responses, and whether they can take the perspective of another gender. We used the slider paradigm (Warriner et al., 2017): participants saw a humanoid manikin, a scale and a word on the screen and were instructed to place the manikin as close to, or as far away from, the word as they believed the person represented by the manikin would prefer to be. A change in the shape of the manikin (we used the bathroom figures of a man and a woman) signaled the perspective that the participant was asked to adopt. To assess the cross-linguistic validity of the findings, we collected data from English and Russian.
We found that women showed a wider range of emotional responses, while men displayed a flatter affect. Participants changed their response strategy in the right direction when estimating words for the opposite gender. The study showed a degree of universality in perspective-taking, demonstrating that both men and women are aware of the emotional preferences of the opposite gender.
The Mental Lexicon. 2026. P. 1-23.
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Book chapter
Russian for special purposes: Corpus-based approaches to vocabulary selection
This chapter is a pedagogically oriented corpus-based study. It describes a method of selecting relevant vocabulary expressing causal relations in Academic Russian. Our study contributes to the corpus-based investigations of academic Russian texts and shows how computational techniques and language data analysis can be used to develop and simplify content-based and discipline-specific instruction for university courses of Russian for Special Purposes. The proposed list of causal expressions is designed as a part of the Russian Academic PhraseBank – a searchable database of multi-word expressions specific to academic texts and organized by discourse functions. The chapter discusses the structure of the PhraseBank, its pedagogical applications and limitations, with a focus on the learner-friendly and structured representation of the relevant expressions.
In bk.: Teaching Russian Through STEM: Contexts, Tools, and Approaches. Vol. 1st Edition. L.: Routledge, 2024. Ch. 7. P. 159-182.