On June 29 - July 3, 2026, 21 teacher of the Russian language from Atyrau Oblast schools, Kazakhstan, completed upskilling in Astrakhan Oblast. The Ministry of Education and Science of the Astrakhan Oblast and the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan facilitated the development of the training program.
This important project in terms of cross-cultural communication and dialog between the culture two countries aimed at the Russian language promotion in the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Kazakh literature promotion in the Russian Federation was funded by Caspian Pipeline Consortium based on resolution of CPC-R Board of Directors and CPC-K General Shareholders Meeting at the initiative of CPC-R government shareholder Transneft.
Astrakhan was selected to host the international educational project for good reason. It is the historical point of crossing of the Caspian Sea region cultures, which allows to link all the training topics with other educational activities. The unique cultural resources of the region, linguistic and cultural studies and visual semantics practices gave a full opportunity to the teachers to rework the teaching techniques of the Russian language as a foreign language and master new training tools.
The intent of the program is for personnel from educational sphere: to develop multicultural competence, the ability to appreciate students’ bilinguality and draw on their native (Kazakh) language and culture, the skills of creating a psychologically comfortable language environment.
The teachers from Kazakhastan underwent training 7-8 academic hours a day during 5 business days. The practical training and visiting activities took part in the second half of the day. The guests watched Autumn Marathon in a cinema and analyzed this movie built on spoken language techniques, idioms and various linguistic registers.
The house of Velimir Khlebnikov, the futurist poet and a great word maker, became a scene to study word building and phonetics, which is highly critical for development of proper pronunciation with Kazakhstani pupils. The paintings of the famous artist B. Kustodiev in the Astrakhan State Art Gallery Named after P. Dogadin were used to dive into linguistic, cultural and visual studies.
The teachers visited the village Altynzhar hosting the memorial complex of a great Kazakh kyuishi composer Kurmangazy Sagyrbayev, a visible symbol of the centuries-old Kazakhstani and Russian neighborhood in the Caspian Sea region. The comparison of the Russian and Kazakh musical instruments, folk songs, the images of steppe allowed to turn an abstract term cross-cultural communication into a very specific set of tools to work with bilingual class.
The project is now ongoing in promoting the Kazakh literature in Russia and the Russian literature in Kazakhstan. By late summer the books will be handed over to 480 state and municipal libraries in the Russian regions crossed by CPC pipeline and to 208 school libraries in Atyrau Oblast, RoK.
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CPC Crude Oil Pipeline System is one of the major projects in the CIS energy sector. The length of the Tengiz – Novorossiysk pipeline is 1,511 km. This route transports over two-thirds of all Kazakhstan export oil, and crude from the Russian oil fields, including those in the Caspian Region. CPC Marine Terminal features three Single Point Moorings (SPM) that enable safe tanker loading at a significant distance offshore.
CPC Shareholders: Russian Federation – 24 %, CPC Company (LLC) – 7%, KazMunayGas JSC – 19%, Kazakhstan Pipeline Ventures LLC – 1.75%, Chevron Caspian Pipeline Consortium Company – 15%, Lukoil International GmbH – 12.5%, Mobil Caspian Pipeline Company – 7.5%, Rosneft-Shell Caspian Ventures Limited – 7.5%, BG Overseas Holdings Limited – 2%, Eni International N.A. N.V. S.ar.l. – 2% and Oryx Caspian Pipeline LLC – 1.75%.