The number of students in the United States who are studying Russian increases virtually every day. Recent world events have helped make the study of Russian a viable alternative to the study of the more traditionally offered foreign languages such a as Spanish, French, and German. Now, more than ever, Russian language ability is seen as an extremely important asset to the student entering the field of law, economics, political science, government and foreign service, or business. World wide, there are approximately 200 million speakers of Russian. Their political and economic influence grows daily as we move forward to the year 2000.