Our teachers

Our lectures are expert teachers, whose native language is Russian. Read also their interview at the bottom of the page.

Kapitolina Fedorova, Professor of Russian Studies

Kapitolina Fedorova is the Associate Professor of Russian Studies at Tallinn University. She graduated from St. Petersburg State University (PhD 2002) and used to work for 15 years at the Department of Anthropology at European University at St. Petersburg. Before joining Tallinn University she spent two years teaching at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, South Korea.

Her research interests include sociolinguistics, language contacts, border and migration studies, linguistic landscape studies, and interethnic communication. She conducted research projects in different regions, including the Russian-Chinese, Russian-Finnish, and Russian-Estonian border areas, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Seoul.

Natalia Tšuikina, Associate Professor of Russian

Natalia Tšuikina is Associate Professor of Russian. She graduated from Saint-Petersburg State University and earned her doctorate degree (candidate of philological sciences) researching the functioning of the semile in a literary text; in 2002 started teaching and research in Tallinn University.

Her research interests include not only different aspects of text analyses, but also trends in the modern Russian language orthography and punctuation. She works on questions of language and culture, language game usage in everyday life. Being a teacher of practical Russian courses, Natalia Tšuikina has paid much attention to the issues of teaching Russian to foreigners and to those who speak Russian as a heritage language.

Irina Moissejenko, Associate Professor of Russian Language Didactics

Irina Moiseenko graduated from the University of Tartu and postgraduate studies in Moscow. She works as a lecturer at the University of Tallinn and has worked at many foreign universities under the Erasmus program (in Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.).

She teaches modern Russian courses at the BA level and courses of Russian as a native and foreign language didactics at MA level. She explores bilingualism and the basics of creating textbooks on language. Sheis also the author of numerous textbooks on Russian language for secondary school.

Natalija Sindetskaja, Teacher of Polish

Natalia Sindetskaja studied in Estonia (Tartu) and in Poland (Kraków, Warszawa and Lublin).

She works as a teacher at Tallinn University and actively participates in the Erasmuse program (Hungary, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Latvia, Poland).

She teaches practical Polish at levels A1, A2 and B1 at the university. Her professional interest is Polish-Estonian cultural relations.

Ilenia Del Popolo Marchitto, Junior Research Fellow

Ilenia Del Popolo Marchitto is a Junior Research Fellow and PhD student in Linguistics (Russian Studies and Communication).

She completed her MA in Literary, Linguistic and Comparative Studies at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” with a thesis in Didactics of Russian as a foreign language. She obtained a Diploma in "Methods of Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language" and the qualification of Russian Language Teacher at Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Her research interests include: Russian language and linguistics, corpus-based approach to language, semantics, pragmatics and second language acquisition.

Olga Roginskaya, Russian Language teacher

Interview with the teachers

Nowadays, there is a growing interest in studying Russian at Tallinn University, and more and more international students are coming here looking for the opportunities to improve their Russian and practice it on an everyday basis. It may surprise those who know little about Estonia and its capital city. Kapitolina Fedorova, Professor of Russian Studies, and Natalia Tšuikina, Associate Professor of Russian, are explaining what brings those students to Tallinn:

Why Tallinn? People speak Estonian in Estonia, right?
Well, yes and no. Tallinn is actually a multicultural and multilingual city with a very diverse population. And almost half of its residents speak Russian as their first language, and many others know it pretty well.

But is it OK to talk to people in Russian? Are there some specific places to go if you want to practice?
Of course! There are Russian Theater and the Center of Russian Culture near the Old Town, Russian Museum and other places organizing cultural events in Russian, for example, the club Põhja Öökull. You can try your Russian skills in shops, cafes and restaurants, some of them even have Russian names - Repa, Troika, Nikolay, Dostojevski… In fact, you’ll discover that Russian is everywhere: you’ll hear it even when you are simply going for a walk or to buy groceries. There will be many languages around but most of all Estonian and Russian, and now also more and more of English.

Honestly, Russian is not an easy language to use - you learn all those endings, rules and cases, so many of them, and sometimes it seems hopeless!
That’s why at our course we try to make students not “learn” Russian but actually use it! "Conversational Practice" is at the core of the course, and all other classes are also communication oriented: at ‘Reading Russian Culture’ or ‘Listening to Russian Culture’ classes, students not only read literary and non-fiction texts and watch films or TV programs but analyze and discuss them.

If there are so many Russian native speakers in Tallinn there should be some also among Tallinn University students, is it possible to meet them?
Sure! Students of the Russian Philology BA program organize a weekly Russian speaking club and welcome everyone to join. They also help international students as their tutors. And of course you can just try to start a conversation with anyone at the campus if you hear that this person speaks Russian. Studying at the university is great for making new friends :)

Natalia and Kapitolina — Natalia Tšuikina, Associate professor of Russian and Kapitolina Fedorova, Professor of Russian Studies in their office surrounded by Russian literature.