Four MIT undergraduate students participated in the Olympiada of Spoken Russian on Sunday, April 8, 2018, sponsored by the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University.

This Russian language competition was the New England component of state and regional competitions that took place all across the country this spring. The Olympiada was first initiated in the 1960s by the American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR).

The main competition was open to middle and high school students from the New England area. A college-level competition was scheduled to coincide with the high school event, and was organized by faculty from Tufts, Harvard, University of New Hampshire, Northeastern, and MIT. Twenty-one first- and second-year Russian language students participated from area colleges. Students were required to present a monologue about themselves and answer questions, recite a poem, and read a text.

The MIT team is pictured below. Back row: Damian Barabonkov (Russian IV) and Abigail Bertics (Russian IV). Front row: Karen Camacho (Russian II), Maria Khotimsky (Senior Lecturer in Russian), Gabrielle Marvez (Russian II). MIT students won two awards: Barabonkov won second place in second year competition; and Camacho won second place in the first year competition.