Arts

29 Jul 09

Peter Blackstock, the first student to get a first class honours in beginners' Russian, pictured in St Petersburg.

Oxford University’s Russian sub-faculty is celebrating its first ever student to graduate with a first class honours degree in beginners’ Russian since the course was launched in 2003.

And with the unprecedented political changes in that region over the last 30 years, Slavonic-speaking countries are firmly back on the European map and prompting increasing interest amongst students and applicants.

Peter Blackstock, of Magdalen College, gained a First-Class Degree with a Distinction in Spoken Russian and is the first student to achieve this after starting the language from scratch. He downplayed his achievement saying he was ‘extremely pleased’ but that ‘the work I’ve done and the experiences I’ve had at Oxford are far more important than the ultimate degree grade’.

Students taking this challenging course need to be able to keep up with the quick pace, particularly in the first year when they are learning the basics.

'We covered the A-level grammar syllabus within the first term and by January we were already looking at literature in the original,' says Peter. 'For my Finals papers, I chose a Russian special authors paper and also opted for a paper in the Structure and History of Bulgarian, which meant that I spent 5 weeks in Plovdiv over the summer.' 

Peter Blackstock decided to use starting university as an opportunity to begin learning a new language. He says: 'I studied French and German to A-level so I decided to read German and Russian as I’d been to Russia on a school history trip at the age of 14 and was intrigued by the country. I was also extremely keen to find out more about Russian literature and was excited about being able to read authors like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in the original.'

Mary MacRobert, Chairman of the sub-faculty of Russian and other Slavonic languages, said: 'When we set up the Oxford Beginners' Russian course we were confident that able students could get outstanding results even if they had not had the chance to study Russian at school: now we are delighted to congratulate Peter on proving that it can be done. Our intensive and rigorous first-year course gets beginners beyond A-level in nine months. It gives them the confidence to go straight into a specially designed eight-month course in Russia, then to take the same Finals course as students who have done A-level, and sometimes to learn another Slavonic language as well, like Peter, who has added Bulgarian to his repertoire.

Russian at Oxford has seen a significant rise in applications from the state sector since the beginners’ course was launched alongside the traditional post A-Level course. An unforeseen development has been the expansion in the uptake of options in other Slavonic languages since the introduction of the beginners’ course in Russian. In each year, there are now at least one or two undergraduates who, after successfully tackling Russian from scratch at Oxford, have the linguistic flair and interest to attempt a further Slavonic language. This year there were nine students in the Final Honour School studying Slavonic languages other than Russian and Czech (with Slovak), namely Bulgarian, Old Church Slavonic, Polish and Serbian.

Peter Blackstock is now searching for a job in publishing and is aiming to use his degree and language skills by working in the department which organises co-editions and translations with foreign publishers. He is planning to keep up his Russian and will be returning to the country to visit soon.