Official Russia

Looks like enrollment of Russia language majors is surging in the United States … perhaps the best thing for our friends in the field is that Russia remain adversarial toward the U.S. in order to keep up interest from students.  From Inside Higher Ed:

Other experts, who note that American students flocked to Russian
during the Cold War, say that a friendly Russia (as in the immediate
post-Soviet era) is less interesting to students than an in-your-face
Russia in which leaders joust (verbally) with the United States and
(not verbally) in places like Georgia.

Eugene Huskey, director of Russian studies at Stetson, quoted the Russian saying chem khuzhe, tem luchshe
(the worse, the better) as applying to the field. “The worse
U.S.-Russian relations are, or the worse the conditions are inside
Russia, the more likely students are to read about the country,” Huskey
said. “The current generation of high school students is growing up
with the perception of a more menacing Russia, and that has piqued
their curiosity in a way that is not dissimilar to what I experienced
as a boy growing up in central Florida during the Cuban missile crisis.”

Source: Robert Amsterdam