Smorodina — a school with a soul

About the founder

Anna Kondratenko

Founder & lead instructor

I am a Russian philologist (PhD) and lecturer of Russian as a foreign language with over ten years of experience. I have taught American, Chinese, and Georgian students — different audiences, one goal: to make Russian a living language, not a set of rules. That experience is the foundation of Smorodina, the school I founded in Tbilisi.

Today I teach at Yale University in the Study Abroad in Georgia program and coordinate the summer school for instructors of Russian as a foreign language. Previously I lectured at Tbilisi State University — Russian literature, including the literature of Russian emigration — at MSU's Institute of Russian Language and Culture, and remotely at Skysmart. Curriculum design, methodological work, and cultural immersion are what I do every day.

I also built the local side of Yale’s Study Abroad in Georgia: found the partner school, host families, and teachers on the ground — the same network Smorodina draws on today.

Beyond teaching, I am a literary critic, translator, and poet-essayist. For me, language has always been inseparable from culture — poetry, translation, conversation over supper in Old Tbilisi. At Smorodina I bring it all together: rigorous as the best universities, warm as Georgia.

• PhD in Philology, Tbilisi State University
• Organized local infrastructure for Yale Study Abroad in Georgia
• Literary translator, critic, and poet-essayist
• Laureate of the Otar Chkheidze Prize for literary translation

PhD · Yale University · Tbilisi State University

Our story

Smorodina was born from a simple conviction: language is not a subject you study — it is a world you inhabit.

We chose Georgia for its warmth and magnetic blend of European and Caucasian culture — a place where Russian is lived, not merely taught. The school’s intellectual roots are in Tbilisi; the seasonal immersion runs in Batumi, on the Black Sea.