The results of the VI Recitation Competition among international students and postgraduates from Asian and African countries "Victory in the Hearts of Generations", dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, have been summed up. Students of the Department of Russian as a Foreign Language of the Institute of International Cooperation of Penza State University won prizes.

The organizer of the competition was the Russian Committee for Solidarity and Cooperation with the Peoples of Asia and Africa.

The "Victory in the Hearts of Generations" competition has become not just an annual tradition, but an important platform that promotes a better understanding of the significance of the Victory, preserving the memory of it among the youth of different countries and strengthening cultural and historical ties between peoples.

In 2025, almost a thousand international students and postgraduates from 79 countries sent videos of expressive readings of poems about the Great Patriotic War to the competition. All contestants are students at 124 universities. The performances were assessed in different categories depending on the course of study, type of training and level of proficiency in Russian. Group and individual performances were assessed separately. In addition, students from the CIS countries were allocated to a separate group, as they speak Russian better than students from other countries.

Among the huge number of works submitted to the competition, only 37 were selected and awarded with diplomas of winners. Among them are the works of students of Penza State University.

1st place was won by Hami Batoul (Lebanon, 24ИФРм1 group), a first-year master's degree student studying Philology. She presented a video in which she recited Rimma Kazakova's poem "In a photo in a newspaper..." (supervised by Olga Barabash, Candidate of Philological Sciences and Acting Head of the Department of Russian as a Foreign Language).

2nd place for a collective reading of Robert Rozhdestvensky's poem "The Movement on Nevsky Stopped" was won by students from 22ИЛК1 group Fan Xingyu, Hou Jiaxin, and Cui Guifeng (supervised by Natalia Zagumennikova, assistant teacher of the Department of Russian as a Foreign Language). The girls came to study at PSU from China for one academic year under the academic mobility programme and have already demonstrated high results.

"When a foreign student tells a teacher that they want to participate in a competition to express solidarity with the great people who liberated the world from fascism, we understand that our work is not in vain. We are proud of our students, how subtly they feel the Russian word, how deeply they can experience what the author writes about," comments Olga Barabash.

The award ceremony will take place in Moscow in May. The main prize for the winners is a trip to St. Petersburg.

The list of winners is available on the website.

The winners' works can be viewed at the link.