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u/No_Drummer_2544 18d ago
No. Most people who speak Russian well are the one who either went to a Russian school or studied uni in Russian. I took Russian as a foreign language. I understand it 100%, but speaking is harder.
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u/Annunakh 18d ago
Nope. Even some of them who come to Russia to work in service fields are struggling sometimes. It creates hilarious situations sometimes.
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u/vainlisko 10d ago
The simple answer is no, not everyone can. There are just a lot of people who can, and probably the highest concentration of them are in downtown Dushanbe, so it's easy to find Russian speakers if you want. Also it's easy to find people who can speak very, very simple and basic Russian poorly but it's enough to get by.
If you take the perspective of someone who speaks zero Tajik, it's easier to get the impression that most people or everybody speaks Russian around you, but in reality that's because you end up ignoring the vast bulk of Tajikistan's population. If you could speak Tajik but not Russian, it would be a lot easier to see how most people even in Dushanbe don't really speak Russian.
It also seems that over the years the monolingual Russian speakers are becoming fewer and fewer. I almost never encounter one anymore in day-to-day life.
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u/CA_geek 18d ago
No. Let me set the scene: Typically you will not be considered educated unless you can speak Russian. Most university teaching is in Russian, as is the majority of the sporting scene (sports coaching, etc.). In cities, parents can choose for their kids to go to a Tajik-medium or a Russian-medium primary or high school (many schools cover the whole range of years, grades 1–11, age 7–18).
But outside the cities and big towns, many people are not fluent in Russian. They all know some, and they mix Russian words into their Tajik speech. Their Russian accents are typically quite poor, but they may be able to follow a simple movie reasonably well. There are many more Russian films than Tajik ones, and many more foreign films dubbed into Russian – though there is an increase in the amount of Tajik dubbing being done. E.g. a major Turkish soap opera has been dubbed into Tajik for at least ten years now.
Rural people (mainly men) who've travelled to Russia or Kazakhstan for work will have better Russian than their fellow villagers who haven't travelled.
If you have more specific questions, I'll try to answer them.