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The main problem with Russian is that Russia/the USSR have been trying to impose it as a lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe, and failed. Most people in those countries simply won't accept it. Besides, Russian is a complex language, with lots of elements that are different from other Slavic languages. Most people who haven't learned it won't understand it either.

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> The main problem with Russian is that Russia/the USSR have been trying to impose it as a lingua franca in Central and Eastern Europe, and failed. Most people in those countries simply won't accept it.

As a native of that area in Europe and having lived through some of the traces of russification I can confirm I have a strong bias against the Russian language. When I was a kid, Russian and French were the foreign languages they taught in school and after '89, everyone agreed it was best to switch Russian with English or German. Nobody there wants to learn Russian or immigrate to a Russian speaking country.

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