Russian language as a factor of soft power in cross-cultural communication: Overcoming the crisis

The relevance of the work is determined by the need for a theoretical understanding of the problem of cultural interaction in the modern world. The process of globalization, which is underway, leads to the expansion of interrelationships and interdependencies of different peoples, including the problem of learning the specifics of cultures in the context of building an efficient local and global dialog based on the soft power policy. The purpose of the article is to analyze the crisis of the soft power policy in the spread of the Russian language as the most important tool of ethnic self-preservation. The methodological basis of the study consists of theoretical methods: the synthesis method is applied to study the problematic area of interaction between language and culture, in particular when considering the soft power policy. The combination of descriptive, comparative, and historical methods, as well as methods of classification and analytical reading, contributed to the formation of the author’s understanding of the problem. The article presents the author’s study of the soft power policy in the Russian education system. It discusses the signs of a crisis in the implementation of the soft power policy that has manifested themselves, on the one hand, through the changes of the main state documents regulating the education process, and on the other hand, the real results of the Russian language study are revealed. Upon analysis, the authors have identified and formulated a number of contradictions in the practice of the Russian language teaching in terms of the soft power policy application and also have come to the conclusion that, to overcome the crisis in the Russian language teaching, some viable options should be taken into account such as strong intellectual potential, experience and traditions of the national school. © 2019, Slovenska Vzdelavacia Obstaravacia. All rights reserved.