146-599: Defunct The All-Russian nation ( Russian : общерусский народ ) or triune Russian nation ( Russian : триединый русский народ ), also called the pan-Russian nation , is the term for the Imperial Russian and later irredentist ideology that sees the Russian nation as comprising a "trinity" of sub-nations: Great Russia , Little Russia , and White Russia . Respectively, these sub-nations are contextually identified with Russians , Ukrainians (usually including
292-648: A Russian Empire , "Little Russian" came be a demonym for all inhabitants of Ukraine under imperial rule. While the political reintegration of the Rus' can be seen in the politics of Russia's tsardom, the Kievan Synopsis , written in the 16th century by the Prussian -born archimandrite of the Kiev Caves monastery Innocent Gizel , contains a description of the ancient unity between the "Russian peoples". This
438-619: A constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%. Starting in 2019, instruction in Russian will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, and in general instruction in Latvian public high schools. On 29 September 2022, Saeima passed in
584-519: A new education law which requires all schools to teach at least partially in Ukrainian, with provisions while allow indigenous languages and languages of national minorities to be used alongside the national language. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. The 2019 Law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" gives priority to
730-436: A Little Russian and Russian, or a Russian from Little Russia speaking (Ukrainian)"; Russophiles from Galicia saw themselves as "Little Russian Russians from Galicia"; many others would fall into this pluralist category, including Nikolai Gogol and nobles of Cossack origin. Conversely, those who favored a mutually exclusive Ukrainian identity over that of Little Russian did so in order to "heighten perceptual differences". "In
876-496: A Soviet and also a Russian. Historical texts commissioned by the government, under the guidance of cultural commissar Andrei Zhdanov , sought to fuse religion, ethnicity, and the state more prominently in the interpretation of history, and project a triune Russian nation as the focus of the Soviet Union. The textbooks published in 1937 reestablished the unity of the Russian state, and connected Russian history from Kievan Rus' to
1022-560: A branch of the Polish people. Meanwhile, in Russia, Ukrainians were also known as Ruthenians ( Russiny , "always with a double-s to stress belonging to the 'All-Russian unity") or more commonly as Little Russians ( Malorossy ); Great Russians were known as Russkiy , a term for all East Slavs under a common nation. During the first half of the 19th century, Ukrainianism/Little Russianism had been favored in Russian intellectual circles. Old Ruthenian and Russophile ideologists agreed that
1168-559: A formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant, the maximal structure can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C) Ruthenia Ruthenia is an exonym , originally used in Medieval Latin , as one of several terms for Kievan Rus' . Originally, the term Rus' land referred to a triangular area, which mainly corresponds to the tribe of Polans in Dnieper Ukraine . Ruthenia
1314-558: A hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of the consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate
1460-484: A language that "belongs to the European cultural space". The financing of Russian-language content by the state will cease, which the concept says create a "unified information space". However, one inevitable consequence would be the closure of public media broadcasts in Russian on LTV and Latvian Radio, as well as the closure of LSM's Russian-language service. In Lithuania , Russian has no official or legal status, but
1606-547: A large number of Ukrainian intellectuals began to refuse the All-Russian national identity, while Ukrainian nationalists emerged and intervened in the Polish-Russian terminological battle, introducing the terms Ukraine and Ukrainians in their contemporary meaning. The All-Russian nationality being 'empire-driven' relied heavily on references to Slavic culture and the historic state of Kievan Rus', and thus required
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#17327720600241752-539: A lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian
1898-588: A lesser extent the languages to the south and the east: Uralic , Turkic , Persian , Arabic , and Hebrew . According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. Feudal divisions and conflicts created obstacles between
2044-622: A minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . 30% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 2% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Azerbaijan , Russian has no official status, but is a lingua franca of the country. 26% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 5% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. In Georgia , Russian has no official status, but it
2190-526: A mutual conclusion that they were distinct peoples. "Ukrainians made a point, in particular, of challenging and undermining the idea of a unitary Rus nation." 19th century Ukrainian historian Mykola Kostomarov wrote of the contrast between Little and Great Russian peoples in his acclaimed essay, Two Russian Nationalities , which spoke of Little and Great Russian peoples constituting "two Russian nationalities" and "two Russian languages". In his Truth about Rus ' series, he stressed that Ukrainians constituted
2336-584: A nationalist movement. After 1918, the name Ruthenia became narrowed to the area south of the Carpathian Mountains in the Kingdom of Hungary , also called Carpathian Ruthenia ( Ukrainian : карпатська Русь , romanized : karpatska Rus , including the cities of Mukachevo , Uzhhorod , and Prešov ) and populated by Carpatho-Ruthenians , a group of East Slavic highlanders. While Galician Ruthenians considered themselves Ukrainians,
2482-414: A nuclear weapon if 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive was a success. According to Medvedev, the "existence of Ukraine is fatally dangerous for Ukrainians and that they will understand that life in a large common state is better than death. Their deaths and the deaths of their loved ones. And the sooner Ukrainians realize this, the better". On 22 February 2024, Medvedev described the future plans of Russia in
2628-460: A part of Zakarpattia Oblast in present-day Ukraine), became subordinated to the Kingdom of Hungary in the 11th century. The Kings of Hungary continued using the title "King of Galicia and Lodomeria" until 1918. By the 15th century, the Moscow principality had established its sovereignty over a large portion of former Kievan territory and began to fight Lithuania over Ruthenian lands. In 1547,
2774-475: A personal level, individuals from White and Little Russia willing to renounce their identity and merge into the 'all-Russian' ethnos were never discriminated against on ethnic grounds, however, "systematic repression was applied to all individuals who upheld a distinct Ukrainian identity whether in the political or in the cultural sphere" and "upward mobility could only be achieved through the acquisition of Russian language and culture". The Ems Ukase of 1876 forbade
2920-526: A qualitatively new entity can be said to emerge—the general language of the working class... capitalism has the tendency of creating the general urban language of a given society. In 2010, there were 259.8 million speakers of Russian in the world: in Russia – 137.5 million, in the CIS and Baltic countries – 93.7 million, in Eastern Europe – 12.9 million, Western Europe – 7.3 million, Asia – 2.7 million, in
3066-419: A real sense, the evolution of the 19th century Ukrainian national reivival can be seen as the story of the conflict between a framework of multiple loyalties on the one hand and one of mutually exclusive identities on the other." The Pre-Romantic understanding of "nation" was that of a community of nobles united by political loyalty, and more importantly excluded membership of the peasant class. Nationalisms of
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#17327720600243212-458: A unique people; the unity of Ukrainians and Russians was seen "as a unity of equal independent parts", and in a number of works he emphasized the federative nature of the Rus' polity. The attitude which accepted Ukrainians as 'equal independent parts' could only last as long as the Ukrainians of Little Russia "accepted their role as members of such an imagined Rus' nation", and after the 1840s
3358-719: Is "an integral part of our own history, culture, [and] spiritual space." During the Russian invasion of Ukraine Dmitry Medvedev , deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and former Russian president, publicly wrote that "Ukraine is NOT a country, but artificially collected territories" and that Ukrainian "is NOT a language" but a "mongrel dialect" of Russian. Medvedev has also said that Ukraine should not exist in any form and that Russia will continue to wage war against any independent Ukrainian state. Moreover, Medvedev claimed in July 2023 that Russia would have had to use
3504-539: Is Belarusian, among ethnic Belarusians this share is 28.5%; the highest share of those who speak Belarusian at home is among ethnic Poles — 46.0%. In Estonia , Russian is spoken by 29.6% of the population, according to a 2011 estimate from the World Factbook, and is officially considered a foreign language. School education in the Russian language is a very contentious point in Estonian politics, and in 2022,
3650-481: Is a co-official language per article 5 of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan . The 2009 census states that 482,200 people speak Russian as a native language, or 8.99% of the population. Additionally, 1,854,700 residents of Kyrgyzstan aged 15 and above fluently speak Russian as a second language, or 49.6% of the population in the age group. In Tajikistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under
3796-401: Is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian , and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages, at least at the conversational level. Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Older letters of
3942-610: Is a post-posed definite article -to , -ta , -te similar to that existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian. In the Southern Russian dialects , instances of unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to [ɪ] (as occurs in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced [a] in such positions (e.g. несл и is pronounced [nʲaˈslʲi] , not [nʲɪsˈlʲi] ) – this
4088-488: Is being used less frequently by Russian-speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding , which fully incorporates the Russian alphabet. Free programs are available offering this Unicode extension, which allow users to type Russian characters, even on Western 'QWERTY' keyboards. The Russian language was first introduced to computing after the M-1 , and MESM models were produced in 1951. According to
4234-624: Is called yakanye ( яканье ). Consonants include a fricative /ɣ/ , a semivowel /w⁓u̯/ and /x⁓xv⁓xw/ , whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants /ɡ/ , /v/ , and final /l/ and /f/ , respectively. The morphology features a palatalized final /tʲ/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects). During the Proto-Slavic (Common Slavic) times all Slavs spoke one mutually intelligible language or group of dialects. There
4380-573: Is more spoken than English. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada, such as New York City , Philadelphia , Boston , Los Angeles , Nashville , San Francisco , Seattle , Spokane , Toronto , Calgary , Baltimore , Miami , Portland , Chicago , Denver , and Cleveland . In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially
4526-514: Is now mostly used among a minority of peoples on the territory of the Carpathian Mountains , including Carpathian Ruthenia . The word Ruthenia originated as a Latin designation of the region its people called Rus' . During the Middle Ages, writers in English and other Western European languages applied the term to lands inhabited by Eastern Slavs . Rusia or Ruthenia appears in
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4672-564: Is odd") – чу́дно ( chúdno – "this is marvellous"), молоде́ц ( molodéts – "well done!") – мо́лодец ( mólodets – "fine young man"), узна́ю ( uznáyu – "I shall learn it") – узнаю́ ( uznayú – "I recognize it"), отреза́ть ( otrezát – "to be cutting") – отре́зать ( otrézat – "to have cut"); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family names, like афе́ра ( aféra , "scandal, affair"), гу́ру ( gúru , "guru"), Гарси́я ( García ), Оле́ша ( Olésha ), Фе́рми ( Fermi ), and to show which
4818-657: Is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to
4964-762: Is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on the Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has
5110-402: Is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities . Russian is the language of 9% of the population according to the World Factbook. Ethnologue cites Russian as the country's de facto working language. In China , Russian has no official status, but it is spoken by the small Russian communities in the northeastern Heilongjiang and
5256-462: Is seen as the earliest historical record of a common Rus' ethnic identity. Meanwhile, in the late 16th century, the word ' Ukraine ' was used extensively to describe Poland's "borderland" region (cf. krajina ), and local Ruthenian (Rus') inhabitants adopted the Ukrainian identity to "distinguish their nationality from the Polish". Ukrainian Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky also declared himself
5402-569: Is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. Also, Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages, but because of later interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian. Over the course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been influenced by Western and Central European languages such as Greek, Latin , Polish , Dutch , German, French, Italian, and English, and to
5548-585: Is spoken by 14.2% of the population according to an undated estimate from the World Factbook. In 2005, Russian was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006. Around 1.5 million Israelis spoke Russian as of 2017. The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian and there are Russian newspapers, television stations, schools, and social media outlets based in
5694-518: Is the stressed word in a sentence, for example Ты́ съел печенье? ( Tý syel pechenye? – "Was it you who ate the cookie?") – Ты съе́л печенье? ( Ty syél pechenye? – "Did you eat the cookie?) – Ты съел пече́нье? ( Ty syel pechénye? "Was it the cookie you ate?"). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners. The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex, with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to four consecutive sounds. Using
5840-470: The 2011 Lithuanian census , Russian was the native language for 7.2% of the population. In Moldova , Russian was considered to be the language of interethnic communication under a Soviet-era law. On 21 January 2021, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared the law unconstitutional and deprived Russian of the status of the language of interethnic communication. 50% of the population
5986-1000: The Apollo–Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975. In March 2013, Russian was found to be the second-most used language on websites after English. Russian was the language of 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian was used not only on 89.8% of .ru sites, but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain .su . Websites in former Soviet Union member states also used high levels of Russian: 79.0% in Ukraine, 86.9% in Belarus, 84.0% in Kazakhstan, 79.6% in Uzbekistan, 75.9% in Kyrgyzstan and 81.8% in Tajikistan. However, Russian
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6132-413: The Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation. 28% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 7% used it as the main language with family, friends or at work. The World Factbook notes that Russian is widely used in government and business. In Turkmenistan , Russian lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996. Among 12% of the population who grew up in
6278-636: The Euromaidan protests and the Revolution of Dignity . In 2013, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov likewise referred to Ukraine as a "brotherly country". Such rhetoric has significantly informed Putin's justification for the Russo-Ukrainian War , including its invasion of Ukraine : on 21 February 2022, three days before the start of the invasion, Putin claimed that Ukraine "has never had its own authentic statehood," and that it
6424-583: The Greek term, used by the Ecumenical Patriarchs of Constantinople from the 14th century (it first appeared in church documents in 1335). The terms originated from the Byzantines , who identified the northern and southern parts of the lands of Rus as: Greater Rus ( Μεγάλη Ῥωσσία , Megálē Rhōssía ) and Little Rus ( Μικρὰ Ῥωσσία , Mikrà Rhōssía ). The terms were geographic in nature;
6570-541: The Greek Catholic Church , and provoked a rise of anti-Russian sentiment among Ukrainians. Kievan Rus' was perceived in Soviet historiography as a common cradle of Eastern Slavs, and Soviet policy codified East Slavs as historically belonging to one Russian people ( Russkiy narod ). This national identity was an extension of the plurality of the early 19th century, wherein a Ukrainian or Belarusian could be
6716-486: The Mongol Invasion of Kievan Rus' and a massive devastation of the core territory, the name Rus' was succeeded by Galician-Volhynian principality , which declared itself as Kingdom of Rus' . European manuscripts dating from the 11th century used the name Ruthenia to describe Rus' , the wider area occupied by the early Rus' (commonly referred to as Kievan Rus ' ). This term was also used to refer to
6862-586: The Orthodox people on all the territory of former Kievan Rus' . An initiative of both Kremlin foreign policy and the Russian Orthodox Church is the concept of the " Russian world " ( русский мир ), seen as the "reunification" of the triune Russian people, and sometimes as the main task for the 21st century. This initiative has been promoted in conjunction with the Russian government in its foreign policy in order to consolidate its position in
7008-424: The Russian empire into a modern nation state and the development of a separate Ukrainian identity would lead to narrow provincialism as opposed to the cosmopolitanism that the Russian language would provide. Following the revolution, a majority of Russians (as well as the authorities) viewed the Ukrainian identity as a superficial invention of the west, namely Austria-Hungary and Germany , with no support from
7154-575: The Rusyns ), and Belarusians . Above all, the basis of the ideology's upholding of an inclusive Russian identity is centered around bringing all East Slavs under its fold. An imperial dogma focused on nation-building became popular in the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire , where it was consolidated as the official state ideology; the sentiment of the triune nationality of "All-Russian"
7300-564: The Ruthenian Voivodeship was established in the territory of Galicia-Volhynia and existed until the 18th century. These southern territories include: The Russian Tsardom was officially called Velikoye Knyazhestvo Moskovskoye (Великое Княжество Московское), the Grand Duchy of Moscow , until 1547, although Ivan III (1440–1505, r. 1462–1505 ) had earlier borne the title "Great Tsar of All Russia". During
7446-513: The Slavophiles and Pan-Slavists were influenced by the "German philosophical tradition of romanticism. Each of these movements (such as the Völkisch movement ) conceived of the nation in a culturalist vein, one that glorified the authenticity of its rural life-world and its millenary fidelity to orthodoxy." By the second half of the 19th century, Russian publicists adopted, and transformed,
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#17327720600247592-567: The USSR , as the Soviet government considered them to be Ukrainian. A Rusyn minority remained, after World War II, in eastern Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia ). According to critics, the Ruthenians rapidly became Slovakized . In 1995 the Ruthenian written language became standardized. Following Ukrainian independence and dissolution of the Soviet Union (1990–91), the official position of
7738-427: The Ukrainian and Belarusian languages to be dialects of the Russian language ; this view was official and dominated popular opinion in the 19th century. In the terminological battle, Poles called Ukrainians 'Ruthenians' ( Rusyny ) while (Great) Russians were called 'Muscovites' ( Moskali ); "stressing the ethnic difference between them". In the case of Galicia , Poles insisted on Ukrainians (Ruthenians) being
7884-528: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On
8030-641: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to
8176-504: The "Kievan inheritance", and associated their survival with fulfilling the historical destiny of reunifying the lands of Rus'. This ideology was ostensibly seen in their given titles (grand princes and tsars) which defined themselves as rulers of "all Rus ' ". In 1328 Ivan I of Moscow persuaded Theognost , the Metropolitan of Kiev, to settle in Moscow; from which point forward the title changed to "of Kiev and [all Rus']"—a title which
8322-686: The "ruler of all Rus ' " in 1648, after driving the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth out of Ukraine in the Khmelnytsky Uprising . Very shortly after Catherine II 's ascension to the throne she issued the ukase of May 1763, declaring the Cossack Hetmanate to be administered according to 'Little Russian rights'. This prompted the Hetmanate's General Military Chancellery of Hlukhiv to be convened
8468-534: The 13th century, western Ruthenian principalities became incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , after which the state became called the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Ruthenia. The Polish Kingdom also took the title King of Ruthenia when it annexed Galicia. These titles were merged when the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was formed. A small part of Rus' ( Transcarpathia , now mainly
8614-588: The 1520 Latin treatise Mores, leges et ritus omnium gentium, per Ioannem Boëmum, Aubanum, Teutonicum ex multis clarissimis rerum scriptoribus collecti by Johann Boemus . In the chapter De Rusia sive Ruthenia, et recentibus Rusianorum moribus ("About Rus', or Ruthenia, and modern customs of the Rus'"), Boemus tells of a country extending from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian Sea and from the Don River to
8760-432: The 1880s through the first decade of the 20th century, the popularity of the ethnonym Ukrainian spread, and the term Ukraine became a substitute for Malaya Rus' among the Ukrainian population of the empire. In the course of time, the term Rus became restricted to western parts of present-day Ukraine ( Galicia /Halych, Carpathian Ruthenia ), an area where Ukrainian nationalism competed with Galician Russophilia . By
8906-519: The 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries. In Armenia , Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as
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#17327720600249052-412: The Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home
9198-427: The Byzantines used them to distinguish between the jurisdictions of the metropolitanates of Moscow and of Halych ; "Little" (or "Inner") referred to the region closer to Byzantium, Galicia ; "Greater" (or "Outer") to the regions further away and more remote, Muscovy . In the Russian language , the word Russian ( Russian : русский , Russkiy ) is a single adjective to the word Rus ( Slavic languages : Русь ). In
9344-428: The Carpatho-Ruthenians were the last East Slavic people who kept the historical name ( Ruthen is a Latin form of the Slavic rusyn ). Today, the term Rusyn is used to describe the ethnicity and language of Ruthenians , who are not compelled to adopt the Ukrainian national identity . Carpathian Ruthenia ( Hungarian : Kárpátalja , Ukrainian : Закарпаття , romanized : Zakarpattia ) became part of
9490-465: The East Slavs". The system of 'All-Russian unity' debated on two models: the French model of national assimilation, and the British model of regional countries under a common nation and identity, with the project's advocates seeing it as a 'middle ground' between both. Russians and Ukrainian intellectuals began to delve into understanding their own national characteristics through research into folklore, ethnography, literature, and history; resulting in
9636-442: The French and Spanish press as "troublemaking".) On 15 March 1939, the Ukrainophile president of Carpatho-Ruthenia, Avhustyn Voloshyn , declared its independence as Carpatho-Ukraine . On the same day, regular troops of the Royal Hungarian Army occupied and annexed the region. In 1944 the Soviet Army occupied the territory , and in 1945 it was annexed to the Ukrainian SSR . Rusyns were not an officially recognized ethnic group in
9782-409: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,
9928-468: The Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ( знак ударения ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress . For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this
10074-406: The Kievan legacy." The concept is a sticking point in modern Russia–Ukraine relations . Russian diplomats as well as Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin have continued to exert the claim that Russians and Ukrainians "are one nation", "one people", and "fraternal", especially in the midst of the Yanukovich government 's balk at the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement , followed by
10220-411: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of
10366-412: The Moscow principality adopted the title of The Great Principat of Moscow and Tsardom of the Whole Rus and claimed sovereignty over "all the Rus'" — acts not recognized by its neighbour Poland. The Muscovy population was Eastern Orthodox and preferred to use the Greek transliteration Rossiya (Ῥωσία) rather than the Latin "Ruthenia". In the 14th century, the southern territories of Rus', including
10512-807: The Russian alphabet include ⟨ ѣ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ е ⟩ ( /je/ or /ʲe/ ); ⟨ і ⟩ and ⟨ ѵ ⟩ , which both merged to ⟨ и ⟩ ( /i/ ); ⟨ ѳ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ф ⟩ ( /f/ ); ⟨ ѫ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ у ⟩ ( /u/ ); ⟨ ѭ ⟩ , which merged to ⟨ ю ⟩ ( /ju/ or /ʲu/ ); and ⟨ ѧ ⟩ and ⟨ ѩ ⟩ , which later were graphically reshaped into ⟨ я ⟩ and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /ʲa/ . While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨ ъ ⟩ and ⟨ ь ⟩ originally indicated
10658-458: The Russian principalities before and especially during Mongol rule. This strengthened dialectal differences, and for a while, prevented the emergence of a standardized national language. The formation of the unified and centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the gradual re-emergence of a common political, economic, and cultural space created the need for a common standard language. The initial impulse for standardization came from
10804-593: The Russo-Ukrainian War when he claimed that the Russian Army will go further into Ukraine, taking the southern city of Odesa and may again push on to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv , and stated that "Where should we stop? I don't know". For his claims Medvedev has been described as "Russian rashist (Russian fascist)" by Ukrainian and American media. A poll conducted in April 2022 by " Rating " found that
10950-650: The Rusyns as a subgroup of their own within the larger Russian nation. Still, the fact that the Rusyns were most closely related to the Little Russians was never denied among the Rusyns. Rusyn followers of the all-Russian concept were known as "Russophiles". Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It
11096-550: The Slavs of the island of Rügen or to other Baltic Slavs, whom 12th-century chroniclers portrayed as fierce pirate pagans—even though Kievan Rus' had converted to Christianity by the 10th century: Eupraxia , the daughter of Rutenorum rex Vsevolod I of Kiev , had married the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV in 1089. After the devastating Mongolian occupation of the main part of Ruthenia which began in
11242-455: The Soviet Union, and presented the territorial gains from Ukraine in the 17th century as liberation and reunification. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the subsequent independence of Russia , Ukraine and Belarus , the concept of either an All-Russian or Soviet people lost its ideological significance. Instead, the conceptions that deny the trinity or a kindredship between these nations have experienced rapid development, meeting
11388-405: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian
11534-740: The Ukrainian nation; and Ruthenophiles, who claimed that Carpatho-Ruthenians were a separate nation and who wanted to develop a native Rusyn language and culture. In 1938, under the Nazi regime in Germany, there were calls in the German press for the independence of a greater Ukraine, which would include Ruthenia, parts of Hungary, the Polish Southeast including Lviv, the Crimea, and Ukraine, including Kyiv and Kharkiv. (These calls were described in
11680-798: The Ukrainian pollster " Rating " found that 55% of Ukrainian respondents (excluding Russian-annexed Crimea and separatist-controlled territories) disagreed with Putin's recent statements that "Russians and Ukrainians are one people belonging to the same historical and spiritual space", while 41% agreed. In Eastern Ukraine , 65% agreed with the statements while 30% disagreed, in Southern Ukraine , 56% agreed while 40% disagreed, in Central Ukraine , 36% agreed while 60% disagreed, and in Western Ukraine , 22% agreed while 75% disagreed. A poll conducted in April 2022 by " Rating " found that
11826-403: The United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics. In Belarus , Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus . 77% of
11972-481: The Western observers in 18th and 19th centuries. Although Karamzin believed that the inhabitants of what he called Great, White, and Little Russia constituted a single Russian people, by the early 19th century, linguistic and ethnographic research, together with the publication of contemporary descriptions and travel accounts, was forcing many scholars to realize that there were, indeed, considerable differences among
12118-403: The broader sense of expanding the use of Russian alongside or in favour of other languages. The current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language ( современный русский литературный язык – "sovremenny russky literaturny yazyk"). It arose at the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter
12264-404: The centuries following their division into two entities, Russia and Ukraine have formed not only a political but also a culturally dualistic unity. Russian culture is meaningless without Ukrainian, as Ukrainian is without Russian." Liberal philosopher Peter Struve was a leading champion of the all-Russian nation. Struve believed that the unity of Russian culture to be crucial for the development of
12410-450: The cooperation of the people who inhabited this land. With the rise of Ukrainian and Belarusian national movements in the late 19th century, opposition came not only from the majority of Great Russians, but also numerous Little Russian intellectuals who insisted on a combined All-Russian identity. The rejection of the Ukrainian movement was directly connected to sustaining the belief of a triune Russian nation, and Ukrainian Russophiles of
12556-572: The country. There is an Israeli TV channel mainly broadcasting in Russian with Israel Plus . See also Russian language in Israel . Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan . In Vietnam , Russian has been added in the elementary curriculum along with Chinese and Japanese and were named as "first foreign languages" for Vietnamese students to learn, on equal footing with English. The Russian language
12702-480: The demands of the Hlukhiv council attempted to establish "a distinctive political, social, and economic system in the Hetmanate", and fulfill the vision by Ukrainian elites of a Little and Great Russia as separate countries united only by a familiar head of state. The concept of the "All-Russian nation" gained in political importance near the end of the 18th century as a means of legitimizing Russian imperial claims to
12848-652: The early 20th century, the term Ukraine had mostly replaced Malorussia in those lands, and by the mid-1920s in the Ukrainian diaspora in North America as well. Rusyn (the Ruthenian) has been an official self-identification of the Rus' population in Poland (and also in Czechoslovakia ). Until 1939, for many Ruthenians and Poles, the word Ukrainiec (Ukrainian) meant a person involved in or friendly to
12994-773: The early modern period, the term Ruthenia started to be mostly associated with the Ruthenian lands of the Polish Crown and the Cossack Hetmanate . Bohdan Khmelnytsky declared himself the ruler of the Ruthenian state to the Polish representative Adam Kysil in February 1649. The Grand Principality of Ruthenia was the project name of the Cossack Hetmanate integrated into the Polish–Lithuanian–Ruthenian Commonwealth . The use of
13140-590: The eastern territories of the partitioned Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . 'Russianness' as an ethnic concept stressed the differences between the East Slav population from the rest. This concept extended to the ideas of being united within " Mother Russia " and having "one blood" ( edinokrovnye ). Russian culture in this period was also marked with an adoption of many western ideas, which made it attractive to others as progressive, rather than backward. Traditional customs and values in Russia were viewed as backwardness by
13286-413: The factory and the industrial plant their local peasant dialects with their phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary, and the very process of recruiting workers from peasants and the mobility of the worker population generate another process: the liquidation of peasant inheritance by way of leveling the particulars of local dialects. On the ruins of peasant multilingual, in the context of developing heavy industry,
13432-456: The final reading amendments that state that all schools and kindergartens in the country are to transition to education in Latvian . From 2025, all children will be taught in Latvian only. On 28 September 2023, Latvian deputies approved The National Security Concept, according to which from 1 January 2026, all content created by Latvian public media (including LSM ) should be only in Latvian or
13578-510: The following September by Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovskyi , at which the council accepted the imperial (All-Russian) narrative by demanding recognition of Peter I's decree of 1708 which stated that "no other people had such privileges as the Little Russian nation", and indicated their descent from and the loyalty to the 'Little Russian nation' (in whose ranks they included everyone except the peasants). Despite recognition of this apparent unity,
13724-631: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to
13870-468: The government and some Ukrainian politicians has been that the Rusyns are an integral part of the Ukrainian nation. Some of the population of Zakarpattia Oblast of Ukraine have identified as Rusyn (or Boyko, Hutsul, Lemko etc.) first and foremost; a subset of this second group has, nevertheless, considered Rusyns to be part of a broader Ukrainian national identity. In 1844, Karl Ernst Claus , Russian naturalist and chemist of Baltic German origin, isolated
14016-480: The government bureaucracy for the lack of a reliable tool of communication in administrative, legal, and judicial affairs became an obvious practical problem. The earliest attempts at standardizing Russian were made based on the so-called Moscow official or chancery language, during the 15th to 17th centuries. Since then, the trend of language policy in Russia has been standardization in both the restricted sense of reducing dialectical barriers between ethnic Russians, and
14162-526: The idea was also referred to as an obshcherusskii (one-Russian or common-Russian) nationality. In Ukrainian , it is referred to as the Tryiedynyi rosiiskyi narod ( Ukrainian : Триєдиний російський народ ) or pan-ruskyi narod ( Ukrainian : пан-руський народ ). In Belarusian , it is referred to as the Tryadziny ruski narod ( Belarusian : Трыадзіны рускі народ ). Note that in this context
14308-535: The ideology of Pan-Slavism; "convinced of their own political superiority [they] argued that all Slavs might as well merge with the Great Russians." This ideological concept is reciprocated by Romantic-era poet, Alexander Pushkin : "Will not all the Slavic streams merge into the Russian sea?" The national project of western and southwestern Russia in the late 19th century has been defined by Alexei I. Miller as
14454-428: The local "Russian" population outside of a "few misguided intellectuals". In contrast to the 18th century view which defined Little Russians as members of the gentry, adherents of the triune Russian nationality now saw the peasantry not as Ukrainians , but as Little Russians. This term, however, did not gain use among the Ukrainian peasantry, and led to further repression of the Ukrainian language (a "Russian vernacular"),
14600-487: The mid-19th century abandoned the idea of constituting a distinct Ukrainian (Old Ruthenian) identity in favor of the triune nationality. Following the January Uprising in 1863 the Russian government became extremely determined to eliminate all manifestations of separatism, and claims for a collective identity separate from the All-Russian identity were wholly rejected by Russian nationalists as attempts to divide
14746-524: The name Rus' , or Rus'ka zemlia (land of Rus'), described the lands between Kiev , Chernihiv and Pereyaslav , corresponding to the tribe of Polanians , which started to identify themself as Rus' ( Ukrainian : Русь, Русини ) approximately in 9th century. In a broader sense, this name also referred to all territories under control of Kievan princes , and the initial area of Rus' land served as their metropole , yet this wider meaning declined when Kiev lost its power over majority of principalities. After
14892-617: The name " Ruthenia " denoted the former lands of Rus' where those Eastern Slavs lived (many of whom later became subjects of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ) who included both Ukrainians and Belarusians . In the 17th century the term Malorossiya was introduced into the Russian language; in English the term is often translated Little Russia or Little Rus , depending on the context. Ukrainians , in varying circumstances, have called themselves Ruthenians (alternatively ruski , rusyny , or rutentsi ) and Little Russians ( malorosy ). Rusyns in western Ukraine have adopted
15038-405: The name "Rusnak". In more recent times, the term Little Russian began to acquire pejorative overtones, denoting both lesser importance and provincial backwardness; in contemporary Ukrainian the term has become entirely derogatory, associated with one who "lacks national consciousness" and with those who would identify as a branch of the all-Russian ethnos. Historically, Ukrainians have also used
15184-508: The nation. Official policy began to fully endorse the notion that Ukrainian (vis-à-vis Little Russian) language and nationality did not exist. Russified inhabitants of White and Little Russia who assimilated to the triune Russian identity were not considered inorodtsy (ethnically alien) within the predominantly Great Russian locales of the Russian Empire, as their differences from proper Russians were not as easily recognized. On
15330-415: The needs of nation-building . However, post-Soviet Russian nationalists continue to speak of a "triune Russian nation" ( triedinaya russkaya natsiya ), and the concept of a triune Russian people has persisted in different forms in the political and publicist spheres of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Also, the trinity conception is regarded as a category from the past century that needs to be renewed by
15476-492: The newly founded Hungarian Kingdom in 1000. In May 1919, it was incorporated with nominal autonomy into the provisional Czechoslovak state as Subcarpathian Rus' . Since then, Ruthenian people have been divided into three orientations: Russophiles , who saw Ruthenians as part of the Russian nation; Ukrainophiles , who like their Galician counterparts across the Carpathian Mountains considered Ruthenians part of
15622-502: The northern ocean. It is a source of beeswax , its forests harbor many animals with valuable fur , and the capital city Moscow ( Moscovia ), named after the Moskva River ( Moscum amnem ), is 14 miles in circumference. Danish diplomat Jacob Ulfeldt , who traveled to Muscovy in 1578 to meet with Tsar Ivan IV , titled his posthumously (1608) published memoir Hodoeporicon Ruthenicum ("Voyage to Ruthenia"). In Kievan Rus',
15768-524: The northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region . Russian was also the main foreign language taught in school in China between 1949 and 1964. In Kazakhstan , Russian is not a state language, but according to article 7 of the Constitution of Kazakhstan its usage enjoys equal status to that of the Kazakh language in state and local administration. The 2009 census reported that 10,309,500 people, or 84.8% of
15914-515: The other hand, before the war, almost a quarter of Ukrainians were in favour of granting Russian the status of the state language, while after the beginning of Russia's invasion the support for the idea dropped to just 7%. In peacetime, the idea of raising the status of Russian was traditionally supported by residents of the south and east . But even in these regions, only a third of the respondents were in favour, and after Russia's full-scale invasion , their number dropped by almost half. According to
16060-461: The other three languages in the East Slavic branch. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect , although it vanished during the 15th or 16th century,
16206-446: The parliament approved a bill to close up all Russian language schools and kindergartens by the school year. The transition to only Estonian language schools and kindergartens will start in the 2024-2025 school year. In Latvia , Russian is officially considered a foreign language. 55% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 26% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 18 February 2012, Latvia held
16352-453: The peasants' speech was never systematically studied, as it was generally regarded by philologists as simply a source of folklore and an object of curiosity. This was acknowledged by the noted Russian dialectologist Nikolai Karinsky , who toward the end of his life wrote: "Scholars of Russian dialects mostly studied phonetics and morphology. Some scholars and collectors compiled local dictionaries. We have almost no studies of lexical material or
16498-452: The period of the Russian Empire , from the 17th century to the 20th century, the word Russian often referred to the All-Russian ( East Slav ) peoples, as opposed to ethnic Russians , who were known as Great Russians . In this period, the All-Russian (Imperial) and Great Russian (ethnic) identity became increasingly intertwined and indistinguishable among the Russian population. In the West,
16644-524: The polity of Kievan Rus' in the 11th century resulted in considerable population shifts and a political, social, and economic regrouping. The resultant effect of these forces coalescing was the marked emergence of new peoples. While these processes began long before the fall of Kiev, its fall expedited these gradual developments into a significant linguistic and ethnic differentiation among the Rus' people into Ukrainians , Belarusians , and Russians . All of this
16790-459: The population aged 15 and above, could read and write well in Russian, and understand the spoken language. In October 2023, Kazakhstan drafted a media law aimed at increasing the use of the Kazakh language over Russian, the law stipulates that the share of the state language on television and radio should increase from 50% to 70%, at a rate of 5% per year, starting in 2025. In Kyrgyzstan , Russian
16936-418: The population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 67% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2019 Belarusian census , out of 9,413,446 inhabitants of the country, 5,094,928 (54.1% of the total population) named Belarusian as their native language, with 61.2% of ethnic Belarusians and 54.5% of ethnic Poles declaring Belarusian as their native language. In everyday life in
17082-469: The post-Soviet area, as it puts Moscow "at the center of an Orthodox civilization of kindred neighbors: Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine". The all-Russian ideology tended to include the speakers of the fourth and only other East Slavic language , the Rusyns of Carpathian Ruthenia , as part of the Little Russians (Ukrainians). Some contemporary Rusyn authors in the United States preferred to consider
17228-564: The principalities of Galicia–Volhynia and Kiev , became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , which in 1384 united with Catholic Poland in a union which became the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. Due to their usage of the Latin script rather than the Cyrillic script , they were usually denoted by the Latin name Ruthenia . Other spellings were also used in Latin, English , and other languages during this period. Contemporaneously,
17374-460: The project of the 'great Russian nation'; "supported and carried out by the government, it was meant to create one modern Russian nation out of the Great, Little, and White Russians." Compared to British Orientalism , "The Russian gentry also felt that the Ukrainian peasantry, by virtue of their Orthodox faith, related language, and history, should be included in a tripartite 'Russian' nation made up of
17520-427: The pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/ , /ĭ/ . Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad, Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example, мороз ('frost') is transliterated moroz , and мышь ('mouse'), mysh or myš' . Once commonly used by the majority of those living outside Russia, transliteration
17666-472: The proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names. Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family . It is a descendant of Old East Slavic , a language used in Kievan Rus' , which was a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries. From the point of view of spoken language , its closest relatives are Ukrainian , Belarusian , and Rusyn ,
17812-447: The publishing of books in "the Little Russian dialect", as well as the performance of music or theater in the language; and historical sources were to be translated into Russian orthography . The education system became a primary tool of nationalizing the peasantry (which did not adopt the Little Russian identity), and the teaching of the Ukrainian language was banned by the state. This was done in order to "make favorable conditions for
17958-491: The respondents), while according to the 2002 census – 142.6 million people (99.2% of the respondents). In Ukraine , Russian is a significant minority language. According to estimates from Demoskop Weekly, in 2004 there were 14,400,000 native speakers of Russian in the country, and 29 million active speakers. 65% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 38% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 5 September 2017, Ukraine's Parliament passed
18104-485: The search for new identities and new unifying impulses. Early in the tenure of Boris Yeltsin , Russia preoccupied itself with recreating a national identity based either on Soviet or pre-Soviet traditions. Ilya Prizel claimed in 1994 that "Today few in Russia would assert Muscovy's role as the sole successor of Kievan Rus' but would argue instead that Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia are one people separated due to Tatar and Polish aggression and, thus, are equal heirs to
18250-679: The survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language. In
18396-459: The syntax of Russian dialects." After 1917, Marxist linguists had no interest in the multiplicity of peasant dialects and regarded their language as a relic of the rapidly disappearing past that was not worthy of scholarly attention. Nakhimovsky quotes the Soviet academicians A.M Ivanov and L.P Yakubinsky, writing in 1930: The language of peasants has a motley diversity inherited from feudalism. On its way to becoming proletariat peasantry brings to
18542-680: The term khokhol amongst themselves as a form of ethnic self-identification, visibly separate from the Great Russians ; Russians commonly use this term as an ethnic slur for Ukrainians, and frequently use it in derogatory or condescending fashion. As a matter of distinction, while Ukrainians widely were referred to as Ruthenians, members of the Ukrainian Russophile movement (also known as Muscophiles) were known as "Old Ruthenians", whereas Ukrainophiles were known as "Young Ruthenians". The disintegration, or parcelling, of
18688-454: The term Rus/Russia in the lands of Rus' survived longer as a name used by Ukrainians for Ukraine. When the Austrian monarchy made the vassal state of Galicia–Lodomeria into a province in 1772, Habsburg officials realized that the local East Slavic people were distinct from both Poles and Russians and still called themselves Rus. This was true until the empire fell in 1918. In
18834-413: The term was used to refer to all the territories under Kievan dominion (mostly East Slavs). The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (1772–1918), corresponding to parts of Western Ukraine , was referred to as Ruthenia and its people as Ruthenians . As a result of a Ukrainian national identity gradually dominating over much of present-day Ukraine in the 19th and 20th centuries, the endonym Rusyn
18980-412: The three had recognizable cultural and linguistic differences, whereas Russophiles went a step further and argued in favor of a common self-identification of Russian and the use of one literary language. The era can be described as one of competing loyalties towards multiple identities, as opposed to mutually exclusive identities, "for many residents of Dnieper Ukraine it was perfectly normal to be both
19126-424: The three East Slavic languages use the word narod , which translates as " people ". Narod ("people") in these languages expresses the sense of "a lower-level, ethno-cultural agglomeration", whereas in English the word "nation" (as used by scholars) also refers to a large group of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, or history. The Slavs adapted the toponym Little or Lesser Rus from
19272-464: The triune Russian, Russophile identity". By the early 20th century Russian attitudes towards the separateness of the Ukrainian identity were negative. From their perspective, Ukrainians lived in Little Russia, which for them "was an inalienable part of the Russian homeland". Dmitry Likhachov , an acclaimed 20th century specialist of Kievan Rus', best summed up this attitude: "Over the course of
19418-786: The two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern , Central (or Middle), and Southern , with Moscow lying in the Central region. The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly, a phenomenon called okanye ( оканье ). Besides the absence of vowel reduction, some dialects have high or diphthongal /e⁓i̯ɛ/ in place of Proto-Slavic * ě and /o⁓u̯ɔ/ in stressed closed syllables (as in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/ , respectively. Another Northern dialectal morphological feature
19564-511: The use of the language has some presence in certain areas. A large part of the population, especially the older generations, can speak Russian as a foreign language. However, English has replaced Russian as lingua franca in Lithuania and around 80% of young people speak English as their first foreign language. In contrast to the other two Baltic states, Lithuania has a relatively small Russian-speaking minority (5.0% as of 2008). According to
19710-406: The various components of the so-called one Russian people, in particular between the Great Russians and the Little Russians, or Ukrainians. The confirmation of such differences not only would undermine the idea of a single Russian people, but also might threaten the link between medieval Kiev and Moscow and thus render precarious the whole framework upon which the Russian imperial conception of history
19856-865: The vast majority (91%) of Ukrainians (excluding the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine ) do not support the thesis that "Russians and Ukrainians are one people". A nationwide poll conducted in March 2000 in Belarus found that 42.6% of the respondents said that they regard Belarusians as a branch of a triune Russian nation. According to a survey conducted in 2015 by the Vilnius-based Independent Institute for Social, Political and Economic Research (IISEPS), exactly two thirds of Belarusians still believe that Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians are three branches of one nation, with 27.1 per cent of respondents considering them to be different peoples. A poll conducted in July 2021 by
20002-490: The vast majority (91%) of Ukrainians (excluding the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine ) do not support the thesis that “Russians and Ukrainians are one people”. The number of those who share this opinion was only 8% (in August 2021, it was 41%, in March 2022 – 21%). Support for this idea was still recorded among 23% of residents of the East and 13% of older respondents. In contrast, in other macro-regions and age groups, there
20148-590: Was almost no support for this thesis. The title "Of all Rus ' ", always used by Russian rulers, is still in use by the Orthodox patriarchs in both Russia and Ukraine . In this case the Russian patriarch uses the title " Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' " , while the Ukrainian patriarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate used the title "Patriarch of Kyiv and all Rus ' ", implying competing claims on spiritual leadership of
20294-403: Was built. In the 19th century the territory of Ukraine "became an object of a terminological war"; in Russia they were referred to as the "southwestern" or "restored" lands. Some favored repressive measures to 'cleanse the Russian soul of the Western borderlands from alien Polish influences' in order to "uncover the pure Russian nature" of the population. Proponents of the triune Russian nation saw
20440-457: Was embraced by many imperial subjects, including Jews and Germans , and ultimately served as the foundation of the Russian Empire. English-language scholarly works refer to this concept as Greater Russia , All-Russian, pan-Russian or triune Russian nation . In Russian , it is referred to as the Triyedinyi russkii narod ( Russian : Триединый русский народ ). In the 19th century,
20586-1010: Was emphasized by the subsequent polities these groups migrated into: southwestern and western Rus', where the Ruthenian and later Ukrainian and Belarusian identities developed, was subject to Lithuanian and later Polish influence; whereas the (Great) Russian ethnic identity that developed in the Vladimir-Suzdal principality and the Novgorodian Russian north, an area also inhabited by Finno-Ugric , Slavic and Tatar-Turkic tribes, isolated from its Ruthene relatives. The two states ( Galicia-Volhynia and Vladimir-Suzdal ) differed in their relationship with other powers, entered into alliances with different partners, belonged to different civilizational and commercial communities, and were in more intimate contact with their neighbouring states and societies than with each other. Muscovite princes considered themselves to be rightful heirs of
20732-405: Was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 18th century. Although most Russian colonists left after the United States bought the land in 1867, a handful stayed and preserved the Russian language in this region to this day, although only a few elderly speakers of this unique dialect are left. In Nikolaevsk, Alaska , Russian
20878-421: Was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 19% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2014 Moldovan census , Russians accounted for 4.1% of Moldova's population, 9.4% of the population declared Russian as their native language, and 14.5% said they usually spoke Russian. According to the 2010 census in Russia , Russian language skills were indicated by 138 million people (99.4% of
21024-617: Was retained until the mid-fifteenth century. Later, in 1341 Simeon of Moscow was appointed Grand Prince "of all Russia" by the Khan of the Mongol Golden Horde . Ivan III , Grand Duchy of Moscow , considered himself heir to all former Kievan Rus' lands and in 1493 he assumed the title of gosudar , or "Sovereign of All Russia". This trend continued to evolve and by the mid-17th century transformed into "Tsar of All Great, Little, and White Rus ' ", and with Peter I 's creation of
21170-402: Was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between
21316-464: Was used to refer to the East Slavic and Eastern Orthodox people of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland , and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Austria-Hungary , mainly to Ukrainians and sometimes Belarusians , corresponding to the territories of modern Belarus , Ukraine , Eastern Poland and some of western Russia . Historically, in a broader sense,
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