Before the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian was the preferred (forced) language of the entire Soviet empire. From the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, and south the border with Iran, every school child learned Russian from kindergarten. National languages took the back seat it Russian. However, as the Union Republics declared independence and time passed, Russian has become a second language and even third language across the former empire. Andrei Shcherbakov, dean of the philological department at the Pushkin Institute, has begun a program called "Ambassadors of the Russian Language," which works in the former-USSR to teach kids Russian. Note: There is a listening exercise embedded on the website. No video for this set.