ELT World Discussion

Larry Paradine · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 5:55 pm Post subject: Mid Volga Region.

I've lived and worked in Russia for most of the last ten years but, although I've spent short periods of time in the capital and the western Urals, my stamping ground is the riverine area from Nizhny Novgorod (the city of Gorky, after whose suspicious death, Stalin named it in 1935 and notorious as Andrei Zakharov's place of exile in the Brezhnev era) to Samara (known in communist times as Kuibishchev after a local alcoholic who led the local bolsheviks in 1917-18, and which has the distinction of being the only big city in Russia to elect a mayor who was opposed by the whole political establishment including "Putin's Party" in 2006), taking in the cities of Cheboksary (my wife's hometown and my adoptive радной город), Novocheboksarsk (now a satellite town with it's own distinctive character, but soon to be merged with Cheboksary if our Chuvash President Fyodorov gets the "yes" vote he wanted in the referendum that he craftily tacked on to the ballot in Sunday's Federal presidential elections), Kazan (where the recently erected great Mosque dominates the visitor's view of the city's Kremlin, almost eclipsing the churches that Ivan Grozny and his successors built on the ruins of the razed mosques of the Kazan Khanate), Ulyanovsk-Simbirsk (the archietypal compromise in the flurry of town naming referendums in the 1990s, combining Lenin's real surname with the tsarist era name, and one of the most unpleasant cities I've had the misfortune to be mugged in), and, of course, Togliatti (named after the long -time Italian communist leader who achieved distinction by surviving Stalin's decimation of European communist parties and being photographed among the grieving, or subtly dissembling, nomenklatura at Stalin's funeral wearing a broad smile, and whose compromise with capitalism presented the city named after him with a giant automobile factory churning out second rate copies of the Fiat car). Anyone wanting the dirt (well, my not entirely impartial views) on the merits and demerits of working for "schools" in this area is welcome to pm me.

David · Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 7:04 pm Post subject:

Interesting stuff,

Thanks for the info.

kazan steve · Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 5:53 am Post subject:

Hi there

I'm based in Kazan and it would be good to meet/talk with people in the area in the ELT world (and get the low down on some of the schools here!). Where are you now Larry?

Steve

Larry Paradine · Posted: Fri Apr 10, 2009 6:07 pm Post subject:

Hi Steve. Just read your post (I don't log on to this site very often as almost all members are located elsewhere). I'm still in Cheboksary. Who are you working for in Kazan? Not Oxford Crown, by any chance?

kazan steve · Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2009 6:39 am Post subject:

Hi Larry

No no, not Oxford Crowne (although I did know a couple of the guys working there and heard of the problems!). I have opened a new school here in the city centre. Very small at the moment, only three native speaking teachers, but the word is spreading and students are coming. You should pop in if you are in Kazan - the kettle is always on and it would be good to hear someone elses view on the city and schools.

Steve

Larry Paradine · Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 4:33 pm Post subject:

I'll take a rain cheque on your offer Steve, in fact I may take a day trip to Kazan sometime in May to buy some ELT materials and something to read at the книжний двор (it's easier to find four leaved clovers and pink elephants than English language literature in Cheboksary). I'll pm you if or when I'm coming. Larry.