ИСТИНА

The paper begins with a brief survey of uniquely Russian attitude to foreign languages in general and their teaching in particular. It includes a historical perspective, the heritage of the past, with a special emphasis on the Soviet traditions, that is, our immediate past. The aim is to describe them both accurately and objectively with a special attention to the questions of their origin in the Soviet period of our history and their functions at the Post-Soviet time when the era of open, free mass communication began. It is these traditions that account dialectically for both advantages and failures, joys and sorrows, certainties and confusions of FLT in Russia. Some problems or, using a more politically correct term, challenges are common to the whole world practice of FLT. Some seem to be uniquely Russian because they stem from overdoing our outdated traditions. At the same time some discoveries and innovations have been made in the Post-Soviet period in the wave of boundless enthusiasm of foreign language teachers and learners aroused by the sudden chance to enter the world community for, as has been mentioned above, a free mass communication that opened so many new opportunities for international cooperation in various spheres of social life.