June 6^th: on birthday of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, the world celebrated the International Day of the Russian language. The Institute of Philology and Arts at Kazan Federal University held an official meeting of the Academic Council on that day.

Day of the Russian language was organized under UN auspices. Russian is one of the six UN official languages ​​along with English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. Each of these languages ​​has its own official international day. Today Russian is the fourth most common - 260 million people speak it.

According to the head of the Department of Russian Philology Mukhametshina Reseda, “Every year the number of international students studying at the Department of Russian Philology increases. This is due to the improving political situation in Russia. More and more people want to learn to speak Russian". They come to Kazan to learn the Russian language and teach it at home.

The well-known scientists, linguists, professors of the history of Russian and Slavic Linguistics, Tatiana Nikolaeva and Gennady Nikolayev gave lectures "Pushkin and the Russian language" and "Pushkin's themes in Russian opera". Their story was interwoven with lines from the works of Pushkin, once again proving the fact that he was able to show the power and beauty of the Russian language. Indeed, in the works of Alexander Pushkin poetry ceased to be the language of the gods only, it became closer to people. He could rearrange even the most colloquial word so that it lost its brutality. Therefore, it is symbolic that this holiday is celebrated on the birthday of Alexander Pushkin.

Two universities from the capital of Tatarstan - Kazan (Volga Region) Federal University and Kazan National Research Technological University - share the 10^th – 11^th places in the National Universities rankings published last week.

The rating includes 56 universities in the country. The leader of the university rankings in Russia in 2011/2012 is Moscow State University with the estimate of 100 points. Last year MSU also took the first place.