Number of Russian Speakers Increasing?

I started off with an article paraphrasing a statement made by the Counselor of the Russian Embassy in Ukraine, Vsevolod Loskutov. The claim was that the "use of the Russian language in Ukraine will boost the country's competitiveness in light of Russia's growing influence worldwide." This, to me, is quite a bold claim. I wondered if this claim implied that the Russian language was gaining influence throughout the world. I set out to try to find out how many Russian speakers there are today compared to the time of the USSR, but couldn't find this information.

However, what facts did come up is that there are about 150 million native speakers of Russian, and between 220-300 million total Russian speakers. Depending on the ranking system you look at, Russia falls between 4-7 as one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. So there is some substance to Loskutov's claim. Russian is also seen as a unifying commonality amongst all countries once under the rule of the Soviet Union, as well as Russian speakers who are abroad. An excerpt from a Russian Public Chamber member Alexei Chadayev, speaking about the need to provide information in Russian:

"A language cannot evolve without promptly tagging new phenomena and embracing new knowledge about the world. It quickly goes stale unless it is also used for writing news reports, novels, poems, research papers and business and personal letters. As for Russian help to foreign-based Russian-language media, the focus must be on the most agile and popular ones and also on those with particular interest in Kremlin-defined modernization avenues including energy, telecommunications, IT, biotechnology and aerospace. "

To further support of Russian's continuing strong existence, 62% of Belarussians, 43% of Kazakhstanians, and 38% of Ukrainians claim Russian as the primary language spoken at home (even more speak both Russian and the state's official language at home) according to a study done in 2007 by V.A. Tishkov. This could be attributed to the large amount of Russian media available in these countries, and the once mandatory teaching of Russian under the Soviet Union.

I find it interesting that such a strong emphasis is placed on doing research and providing information in Russian in order to increase its international economic stance. If we do choose to look at language as a influential force in the economic and residential sphere, we are left also to ponder about whether it is worth it, economically, to revive old languages. If the more popular languages are what gives a country economic competitiveness, reviving old languages would remain as a personal pleasure. In essence, knowing a dying language may not be valuable in economics.

Reference:

http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/05/22/8300689.html

http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/05/23/8330556.html

http://www.springerlink.com/content/8mk9305667621w66/fulltext.pdf

http://www.languagehelpers.com/languagefacts/russian.html