Vlasov S. V., Moskovkin L. V. The first tutorial of Russian as a foreign language printed in Russia: Investigation and the text. St. Petersburg: St. Petersburg University Press, 2023. 196 p.: Book review

Abstract

The monograph under review is devoted to the first tutorial of Russian as a foreign language that was actually printed in Russia, “French and Russian Grammar”, published by the Imperial Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, in 1730. This anonymous tutorial, composed and compiled as a French-Russian phrasebook, was for a long time regarded as a tutorial of French for Russian speakers and was, therefore, poorly studied. The authors of the book conduct a detailed investigation of the history of the tutorial’s creation, its linguistic and pedagogical peculiarities; they also define its prototype and its sources and put forward a version of its authorship, engaging extensive archival, memoir and historical-scientific data. The full text of “French and Russian Grammar” is given with detailed comments.