In Azerbaijan schoolchildren study in Russian more often than in neighboring Georgia and Armenia. Appeals are periodically heard in the country to stop state funding of education in Russian. This is happening now, against the backdrop of "protection of the Russian-speakers" in Ukraine. However, in Azerbaijan, the issue of learning the Russian language is largely an economic need and a chance to find a job, and therefore the demand for Russian schools is growing. The BBC has figured out how this happens.
My grandson is now in the second grade at a Russian school. my granddaughter is five years old, but I will send her to a Russian school, because wherever you look for a job, the first thing you ask about the Russian language," says Gulyar Sharifova, a resident of Egypt Phone Number List Goranboy region in the west of Azerbaijan. She assures that even if classes were opened in their region in English (the most common language abroad), she would still send her grandchildren to the Russian class. This decision is dictated by her own destiny. In the 1990s, her husband died in the war in Karabakh.
She tried to find at least some simple, lowest paid job, but every time she was asked if she knew Russian. Many years later, Gular says, her children faced the same problem, and so she sent her grandchildren to a Russian school. This is what many people in Azerbaijan do today, even those who do not speak Russian themselves. Over the past five years, the number of students in Russian schools in Azerbaijan has increased from 90,000 to 150,000. Every tenth student is educated in Russian in public schools, and this fact periodically becomes a topic of heated discussion.
