> russian is a dying language if you'd know russian, you'd also know that it isn't a dying language. it pretty much is the lingua franca of eastern europe (if you exclude english), and it does in many ways have a similar role to french.  why? because of its historical development. you simply cannot replace russian with polish, or bulgarian, or ukrainian, or belarussian. it is impossible to do so. the language of science, language of history, language of diplomacy and politics in eastern europe is russian, and will remain to be so for many decades, probably centuries.
Lithuania