Published on: 2026-04-20
Source: Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University –
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St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University of Peter the Great for the seventh time became the venue for the annual cultural and educational event “Total Dictation.” About 200 people gathered in the university walls to test their literacy. More than half of the participants were not writing the dictation for the first time.
In 2004, students of Novosibirsk State University organized a literacy campaign. Since then, more than four million people have participated in the “Total Dictation.”
In 2026, the author of the dictation was prose writer, publicist, researcher of 20th century Russian literature, laureate of the “Big Book” award, Alexey Varlamov. The main theme of the text is the childhood of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. The excerpt titled “The Magic Era’s Signet Ring” was taken from the work “Pushkin. The Surname.”
The event took place in 18 regions of Russia and 55 countries worldwide both offline and online. The text of the dictation was translated into more than 25 languages. The capital of the “Total Dictation” in Russia this year was the city of Ulan-Ude, where Alexey Varlamov personally read the text to the participants.
The heart of the event at SPbPU was auditorium 235. The speaker at the university was a graduate of the Polytechnic, an entrepreneur, managing partner of the company “Kaskod-electro” and co-owner of the glamping “Tea Harbor”, Andrey Sharikov:I felt positive tension and responsibility with everyone present in this hall. I tried to pay attention to those who were listening and come closer to them to help as best as I could, without hints. It’s very nice that there are such events that unite people. The intelligence in this hall was simply off the charts.
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The host was graduate student of the Humanities Institute Alexander Tsepkalo.
Before the start, a humorous news segment was shown on the screen, and then some tricky Russian language rules were repeated. This helped to ease the atmosphere in the hall.
Among those gathered were both those who crossed the PolitE assembly threshold for the first time, and those for whom these walls are a memory of their student years.
I have been writing dictations since 2018. I really love literate speech, even in correspondence I try to follow all the rules of punctuation and spelling. I get colossal pleasure from the whole event, especially since I am on the campus of Politeh — after all, I once studied here. Now I invite my children to participate with me in the “Total Dictation.” I hope that next year I will come with them
,â — told about her participation Maya.
Olga and Denis also shared their impressions of the dictation:It wasn’t difficult, but let’s look at the results. This is our first experience in writing the “Total Dictation,” now we hope for an A.
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Some participants prepared in advance for writing the dictations. Elena shared her experience:I specially attended courses to prepare for the “Total Dictation.” The text did not seem difficult to me, but still, during the process of writing, I encountered some difficulties.
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