Pyotr or Petr Yakovlevich Chaadayev ( Russian : Пётр Я́ковлевич Чаада́ев ; also spelled Chaadaev , or Čaadajev ; 7 June [27 May O.S. ] 1794 – 26 April [14 April O.S.] 1856) was a Russian philosopher . He was one of the Russian Schellingians .
119-674: Eurasianism ( Russian : евразийство , romanized : yevraziystvo ) is a socio-political movement in Russia that emerged in the early 20th century under the Russian Empire , which states that Russia does not belong in the " European " or " Asian " categories but instead to the geopolitical concept of Eurasia and the " Russian world " (Russian: Русский мир , romanized: Russky mir ), forming an ostensibly standalone Russian civilization . The first Eurasianists were mostly émigré , pacifists , and their vision of
238-568: A communist state . Many viewed the Soviet Union as a stepping stone on the path of creating a new national identity that would reflect Russia's geopolitical situation. Eurasianist support for the Soviet Union began in the 1920s during the Stalinist era , which witnessed the emergence of a distinct socialist nationalism through CPSU 's enforcement of " Socialism in one country " policy. Despite this, all organized Eurasianist activities in
357-674: 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
476-519: 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
595-675: A "Eurasian and Euro-Pacific" civilizational-state closely aligned with China , the Muslim world , and other countries of the Global South , seeking to replace Western hegemony by a "Greater Eurasian Partnership". "We do not belong to any of the great families of the human race; we are neither of the West nor of the East, and we have not the traditions of either" — Russian philosopher Pyotr Chaadayev , 1829 The origins of Eurasianism were in
714-692: A Eurasian empire that will occupy the entire continent. The main threat is declared by the United States and the Anglosphere in general under a " neo-liberal " ideology he calls " Atlanticism ". The most preferred form of government is a Russian fascist dictatorship and a totalitarian state with complete ideological control over society. In the 1990s, Dugin criticized Italian fascism and German Nazism as "not fascist enough", and accused China of anti-Russian subversion. In subsequent years he abandoned direct apology for fascism and prefers to speak from
833-488: 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) Pyotr Chaadayev Chaadayev wrote eight "Philosophical Letters" about Russia in French between 1826 and 1831, which circulated among intellectuals in Russia in manuscript form for many years. They comprise an indictment of Russian culture for its laggard role far behind
952-617: A great power, in just such a 'Great Space', that of Eurasia. The head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's school for future diplomats , Igor Panarin , is a vocal Eurasianist, as is the head of the Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs at the Moscow Higher School of Economics , Sergey Karaganov . Academics such as Natalya Narochnitskaya , Yegor Kholmogorov , and Vadim Tsymburskii all espouse
1071-440: A kind of Russian neo-imperialism . Modern Eurasianists have coalesced around three prominent ideological currents: the neo-fascist Eurasianist movement of Aleksandr Dugin ; the communist Eurasianism of Gennady Zyuganov ; and a state-sanctioned Eurasianism that advances Russian geopolitical interests. Eurasianism has been officially endorsed in Russia's 2023 Foreign Policy Concept approved by Vladimir Putin , which defined Russia as
1190-484: 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
1309-588: 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
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#17327761555311428-633: A messianic version of Eurasianism, and twin it with some form of Eastern Orthodox Church theology. The Eurasia Movement is a National Bolshevik Russian political movement founded in 2001 by the writer Eduard Limonov and political philosopher Aleksandr Dugin . The organization follows the neo-Eurasian ideology, which adopts an eclectic mixture of Russian patriotism , Orthodox faith , anti-modernism , and even some Bolshevik ideas. The organization opposes "American" values such as liberalism , capitalism , and modernism . An mentioned exponent of neo-Eurasianism Alexander Dugin , who initially followed
1547-622: 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
1666-425: A new 'golden age' of global political and cultural illiberalism ". Australian russologist Paul Dibb identifies Putin, supported by Panarin, Karaganov and Dugin, as having "begun to stress the geopolitics of what they call 'Eurasianism', which is an intellectual movement promoting an ideology of Russian–Asian greatness." In this context, a westernized Ukraine would be in the words of Karaganov "a spearhead aimed at
1785-526: 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
1904-527: A seminar. One of the participants was Vladimir Nikolaevich Ilyin (1890-1974), a philosopher, theologian and composer from Kyiv and not related to Ivan A. Ilyin who has been presented in the literature by various authors as belonging to the group. Several members of the Eurasianists were affected by the Soviet provocational TREST operation, which had set up a fake meeting of Eurasianists in Russia that
2023-454: A space in opposition to the 'spacelessness' of Western-dominated global order. Influential Russian foreign policy thinkers view the emerging twenty-first-century international order as being constituted not by institutions of global governance, but by a few major political-economic regions, dominated by major powers, a return to the sphere-of-influence politics of the past. It is Russia's goal [say these thinkers] to assert its own central role as
2142-585: A structural ideological character, and served within the frame of Russian imperial interests . The ideas of the monarchist vostochniki would, however, become the precursor to the Eurasianist movement that emerged in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and advocated the formation of a nation-state . Eurasianism is a political movement with origins in the Russian émigré community in
2261-579: A system of foreign policy, economic ideas and priorities (as opposed to a philosophy). This type of Eurasianism is unequivocally open to the outside world. The Eurasian Economic Union was founded in January 2015, consisting of Armenia , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , Russia and observer members Moldova , Uzbekistan and Cuba , all of them (except Cuba) being previous members of the Soviet Union. Members include states from both Europe and Asia;
2380-416: A vindication of Soviet Union in the eyes of many Eurasian activists. These Eurasianists criticized the anti-Bolshevik activities of organizations such as ROVS , believing that the émigré community's energies would be better focused on preparing for this hoped for process of evolution. In turn, their opponents among the emigres argued that the Eurasianists were calling for a compromise with and even support of
2499-539: 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,
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#17327761555312618-481: 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
2737-401: 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
2856-489: Is a messianic Russian nationalist and a Eurasianist "whose constant invocation of history going back to Kievan Rus , however specious, is the best explanation for his view that Ukraine must be part of Russia's sphere of influence ". Defunct Drawing on historical, geographical, ethnographical, linguistic, cultural and religious studies, the Eurasianists suggested that the lands of the Russian Empire, and then of
2975-610: 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
3094-488: 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
3213-624: 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
3332-573: 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
3451-564: 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
3570-402: 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
3689-964: Is sometimes called the "Greater Russia" and is described as a political aspiration of pan-Russian nationalists and irredentists to retake the territories of the other republics of the former Soviet Union , territory of the former Russian Empire , the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan , and amalgamate them into a single Russian state. Alexander Rutskoy , the vice president of Russia from 1991 to 1993, asserted irredentist claims to Narva in Estonia , Crimea in Ukraine , and Ust-Kamenogorsk in Kazakhstan , among other territories. Before war broke out between Russia and Georgia in 2008, Russian political theorist Aleksandr Dugin visited South Ossetia and predicted: "Our troops will occupy
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3808-569: 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
3927-585: 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
4046-486: Is the rejection of Russian ethnic nationalism ; which seeks a pan-Slavic state. The Eurasianists strongly opposed the territorial fragmentation of the Russian Imperial state that had followed in the wake of the revolution and civil war, and they used their geo-historical theories to insist on the necessity of the geopolitical reconstruction of the Russian state as a unified Eurasian great power. Unlike many of
4165-518: 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
4284-470: 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
4403-1000: 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
4522-522: The Bolshevik Revolution and the following civil war (1917–1923). They used their geo-historical theories to insist on the necessity of the geopolitical reconstruction of the Russian state as a unified Eurasian great power. Unlike many of the White Russians , the Eurasianists rejected attempts for Tsarist restoration . To enable their return, Eurasianist émigré became supportive of the Bolshevik Revolution , but not its stated goals of building
4641-413: 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
4760-623: The Crimean War and the 1878 Berlin Treaty , widely decried as a national humiliation in Russia, a new breed of monarchist elites who advocated eastward expansion, known as vostochniki (Orientalizers), emerged. Many of the vostochniki began emphasizing their "Asianness" to defend the Russian Empire from what they viewed as " intellectual colonization " from the Romano-Germanic cultures of Western Europe. Czarist vostochniki like
4879-516: 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 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
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4998-534: The Islamic World and rest of the Global South ( Latin America and Southern Africa ). The policy identifies United States and other Anglosphere as "the main inspirer, organizer and executor of the aggressive anti-Russian policy of the collective West" and seeks the end of geopolitical American dominance in the international scene. The document also adopts a neo-Soviet posture, positioning Russia as
5117-662: The October Revolution , and they portrayed the Bolshevik movement as a necessary reaction to the rapid modernization of Russian society. Eurasianism was based on a combination of Third-Worldism , resistance to Westernization , championing what it views as the "cultural superiority" of the East over the Western World and defined Eurasia in geographical terms, shared by peoples of Russian - Turkic heritage. Stalin 's " Socialism in one country " policy served as
5236-562: The Patriotic Party ( Vatan Partisi ). In the future time depicted in George Orwell 's novel Nineteen Eighty Four , the Soviet Union has mutated into Eurasia , one of the three superstates dominating the world. Similarly, Robert Heinlein 's story " Solution Unsatisfactory " depicts a future in which the Soviet Union would be transformed into "The Eurasian Union". Whether or not there is any connection between these uses of
5355-636: 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 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
5474-753: The Russian State University for the Humanities . Modern Eurasianism has been criticized as a Russian neo-imperialist and expansionist ideology rooted in Tsarist notions of "Russian exceptionalism" that attempts to maintain Russian ethnic hegemony over non-Russian minorities living in modern Russia 's spheres of influence, through the creation of a new national mythos . The anti-Western orientation of Eurasianism has been weaponized in Putinist Russia to shut down any dissent from
5593-709: The Soviet Union , formed a natural unity. The first Eurasianists were mostly Émigrés , pacifists , and their vision of the future had features of romanticism and utopianism . The goal of the Eurasianists was the unification of the main Christian churches under the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to French historian Marlene Laurelle , despite admiring aspects of European fascist movements, early Eurasianist intellectuals were repelled by their glorification of violence, militarism , extremism, racism , etc. A key feature of Eurasianism
5712-584: 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
5831-658: 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
5950-485: The white Russians , the Eurasianists rejected all hope for a restoration of the monarchy. Aversion to democracy is an important characteristic of Eurasianism. Eurasianists considered ideocracy a good thing, provided that the ruling ideas were the right ones. For David Lewis, there are a number of people who assert "an alternative topography, articulated in a series of spatial projects – the ' Russian World ', 'Eurasian integration', 'Greater Eurasia' – which aims to carve out
6069-531: The " Tashkent Pact " or " Tashkent Treaty "). Three other post-Soviet states – Azerbaijan , Belarus , and Georgia – signed the next year and the treaty took effect in 1994. Five years later, six of the nine – all but Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Uzbekistan – agreed to renew the treaty for five more years, and in 2002 those six agreed to create the Collective Security Treaty Organization as a military alliance. Uzbekistan rejoined
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#17327761555316188-618: The 1920s who had fled Russia in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution, the Russian civil war and witnessed the socio-political turbulence of the Interwar period . The movement posited that Russian civilization does not belong in the "European" or "Asian" categories and constituted a separate "third continent within the Old World ". As anti-monarchists and proponents of an authoritarian republic , Eurasianists praised many aspects of
6307-459: The 19th century, when the Russian Empire was involved in constant wars with European powers to its west. Many philosophers, intellectuals and strategists were alienated from Europe and felt Europeanization was a threat to Russia's national identity. Russian poet Fyodor Dostoevsky famously said in 1881: " In Europe we were Tatars , but in Asia too we are Europeans. " In the aftermath of events like
6426-519: 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
6545-471: 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
6664-595: The CSTO in 2006 but withdrew in 2012. Eurasianist sentiments have been on the rise across Russian society since the ascent of Vladimir Putin in the country. In a poll conducted by Levada Center in 2021, 64% of Russian citizens identify Russia as a non-European country; while only 29% regarded Russia to be part of Europe. Dmitry Medvedev , deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and former Russian President, in 2022, has declared on his Telegram channel
6783-531: The Decembrists. These connections may have contributed to his failure to find a position in the new administration of Emperor Nicholas I ( r. 1825–1855 ). Chaadayev befriended Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) and became a model for Chatsky , the chief protagonist of Alexander Griboyedov 's play Woe from Wit (1824). During the 1840s Chaadayev was an active participant in Moscow literary circles. The main thesis of his famous Philosophical Letters
6902-527: The Eurasianists sprung up in the émigré community at around the same time, such as the pro-Monarchist Mladorossi and the Smenovekhovtsi . During the mid-1930s, representatives of the Eurasianist movement who had settled in the Soviet Union were suppressed during the Stalinist purges and émigré Eurasianists had mostly scattered throughout Europe. By 1938, all organized Eurasianist movement had ceased to exist. Early proponents of Eurasianist themes in
7021-419: The Eurasianists were Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy , Pyotr Savitsky [ ru ] , Pyotr Suvchinsky , D.S. Mirsky , Konstantin Chkheidze , Pyotr Arapov, Lev Karsavin , and Sergei Efron . Philosopher Georges Florovsky was initially a supporter, but backed out of the organization claiming it "raises the right questions", but "poses the wrong answers". Nikolai Berdyaev wrote that he may have influenced
7140-417: The Eurasianists' acceptance of the Bolshevik Revolution as a fact, but he noted that a number of key Eurasianist tenets were completely alien and hostile to him: they did not love freedom as he did, they were statists, they were hostile to Western culture in a way Berdyaev was not, and they accepted Orthodoxy in a perfunctory manner. In October 1925 a congress was held in Prague with the intention of creating
7259-411: The Georgian capital Tbilisi, the entire country, and perhaps even Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, which is historically part of Russia, anyway." Former South Ossetian president Eduard Kokoity is a Eurasianist and argues that South Ossetia has never left the Russian Empire and should be part of Russia . In March 2022 American journalist Michael Hirsh wrote that Russian President Vladimir Putin
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#17327761555317378-409: 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,
7497-468: 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
7616-411: 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
7735-807: 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
7854-458: 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
7973-492: The Soviet Union were ended during the Great Terror of Joseph Stalin (1936–1940). After the Second World War , Stalin's efforts to empower an Eastern Bloc of communist states opposed to the Western capitalist world were seen by Eurasianist remnants as compatible with their own ideology. Eurasianism underwent a resurgence after the collapse of the Soviet Union during the 1990s, and has been mirrored by Turanism in Turkic nations. This new Eurasianism has been described as
8092-405: 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
8211-416: The Soviet regime, while justifying its ruthless policies (such as the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church and demolition of churches ) as mere "transitory problems" that were inevitable results of the revolutionary process. A communist Eurasianist faction led by Pyotr Suvchinsky gained traction during the 1920s, which began denouncing the anti-Soviet critics as " bourgeois ". The key leaders of
8330-403: 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
8449-416: The West argued that control of the Eurasian heartland was the key to geopolitical dominance. It influenced Oswald Spengler , as well as various far-right extremists . These included the American white nationalist and neo-Nazi Francis Parker Yockey , the Belgian Nazi collaborator Jean-François Thiriart and interwar German National Bolsheviks . The political-cultural concept espoused by some in Russia
8568-403: 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
8687-579: The censorship process. Because there was nothing to charge him with, Chaadayev was declared legally insane and put under constant medical supervision, though this was a formality rather than a real administrative abuse. Chaadayev was born and died in Moscow . The familty name of the Chaadayevs [ ru ] probably derives from the Turkic word Chaʿadai , with the name deriving from Chagatay ,
8806-543: The classic right Eurasianists, who remained staunchly anti-communist and anti-Soviet. After the emergence of "left Eurasianism" in Paris, where some of the movement's leaders became pro-Soviet, Trubetzkoy who was a staunch anti-communist heavily criticised them and eventually broke with the Eurasianist movement. The Eurasianists faded quickly from the Russian émigré community. By 1929, the Eurasianists had ceased publishing their periodical. Several organizations similar in spirit to
8925-425: The concepts of European New Right . Researchers note that in the formulation of philosophical problems and political projects, he significantly deviates from classical Eurasianism, which is presented in his numerous works very selectively, eclectically. In the neo-Eurasianism of Dugin's version, the Russian ethnos is considered "the most priority Eurasian ethnos", which must fulfill the civilizational mission of forming
9044-417: 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
9163-572: 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
9282-413: 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,
9401-456: 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
9520-505: The future had features of romanticism and utopianism . The goal of the Eurasianists was the unification of the main Christian churches under the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church . A key feature of Eurasianism is the rejection of Russian ethnic nationalism , which seeks to build a pan-Slavic state . The Eurasianists strongly opposed the territorial fragmentation of the Russian Empire that had occurred due to
9639-631: 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
9758-480: 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
9877-683: The heart of Russia". Eurasianism would seem negatively to impact the Baltic countries , as well as Poland . Igor Torbakov argued in June 2022 that "According to the Kremlin's geopolitical outlook, Russia could only successfully compete with the United States, China or the European Union if it acts as a leader of the regional bloc. Bringing Russia and its ex-Soviet neighbours into a closely integrated community of states, Russian strategists contend, would allow this Eurasian association to become one of
9996-528: The ideology of National Bolshevism , brought into Eurasianism the idea of a " third position " (a combination of capitalism and socialism), geopolitics (Eurasianism as a tellurocracy , opposing the Atlantic Anglosphere thalassocracy of the USA and NATO) and Stalinist Russian conservatism (the USSR as a major Eurasian power). In Dugin's works, Eurasian concepts and provisions are intertwined with
10115-486: The leaders of Western civilization . He cast doubt on the greatness of the Russian past, and ridiculed Orthodoxy for failing to provide a sound spiritual basis for the Russian mind. He extolled the achievements of Europe, especially in rational and logical thought, its progressive spirit, its leadership in science, and indeed its leadership on the path to freedom. The Russian government saw his ideas as dangerous and unsound. After some were published, they were all banned by
10234-422: The major centres of global and regional governance." According to Clover, Eurasianism appeared to be all the rage in early 21st-century Russia. One commentator noted that during Putin's later years, it was "one of the best known and most frequently mentioned political movements of the period." Ideologically, President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev 's speech in March 1994 at Moscow State University became
10353-473: 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 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
10472-524: 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
10591-481: The official Kremlin line. Political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov defined Dugin's version of Neo-Eurasianism as "a form of a fascist ideology centred on the idea of revolutionising the Russian society and building a totalitarian , Russia-dominated Eurasian Empire that would challenge and eventually defeat its eternal adversary represented by the United States and its Atlanticist allies, thus bringing about
10710-515: 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
10829-461: 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,
10948-446: 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
11067-453: 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
11186-542: The philosopher Konstantin Leontiev self-identified as a " Turanian " rather than Slavic, signalling a general Eurasianist cultural shift. Even Pan-Slavic intellectuals began stating their predisposition towards Asia against Europe, Islam and Buddhism above Roman Catholicism , and Turks over the Latins . However, the terminology deployed by the vostochniki had mostly remained ambiguous, with their ideas not attaining
11305-459: 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
11424-418: 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
11543-553: The positions of the conservative revolution and National Bolshevism, which, however, researchers also refer to varieties of fascism called the Fourth Political Theory . Thus, Marlene Laurelle has portrayed Dugin's neo-Eurasianism as being very similar to the militant mentality of inter-war fascist movements in Europe . He headed 2023 establishment the Ivan Ilyin Higher School of Politics at
11662-479: 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
11781-472: 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 ,
11900-491: 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
12019-435: The second son of Genghis Khan . (The Mongol name Chagatay means "bold", "honourable" or "true". ) After leaving Moscow University without completing his course in 1812, he entered the army and fought against the 1812 French invasion of Russia . From 1823 to 1826 he travelled in Europe, so he was out of Russia during the 1825 Decembrist insurrection, though he was questioned on his return about his connections with many of
12138-631: The starting point for the implementation of a pragmatic Eurasianism. He proposed an integration paradigm that was fundamentally new at the time: to move towards a Eurasian Union based on economic integration and common defense. This vision has been later materialized in the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security Treaty Organization . Eurasianism in Nazarbayev's reading is seen as
12257-623: The state goal "to finally build Eurasia from Lisbon to Vladivostok ." In 2023, Russia adopted a Eurasianist, anti-Western foreign policy strategy in a document titled " The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation " approved by Vladimir Putin . The document defined Russia as a "unique country-civilization and a vast Eurasian and Euro-Pacific power" that seeks to create a "Greater Eurasian Partnership" by pursuing close relations with China, India, countries of
12376-527: The successor state of USSR and calls for spreading "accurate information" about the "decisive contribution of the Soviet Union" in shaping the post-WWII international order and the United Nations . Since the late 1990s, Eurasianism has gained some following in Turkey among neo-nationalist ( ulusalcı ) circles. The most prominent figure who is associated with Dugin is Doğu Perinçek , the leader of
12495-679: 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
12614-459: 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
12733-634: The term "Eurasia" and the geopolitical ideology of Eurasianism is unclear. Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It 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
12852-786: 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
12971-553: The union promotes political and economic cooperation among members. The Collective Security Treaty Organization is an intergovernmental military alliance that was signed on 15 May 1992. In 1992, six post-Soviet states belonging to the Commonwealth of Independent States – Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan , and Uzbekistan – signed the Collective Security Treaty (also referred to as
13090-511: 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
13209-452: The world some type of great lesson. Upon reading the first Philosophical Letter, Tsar Nicholas I wrote in the margin that only a madman could have expressed the views it contained, a comment that shortly thereafter caused Chaadayev to be declared insane, though the judgment may also have been based on Chaadayev's "eccentricities and nervous peculiarities." Chaadayaev's case may have been the first recorded incident in Russia in which psychiatry
13328-513: Was attended by the Eurasianist leader P.N. Savitsky in 1926 (an earlier series of trips were also made two years earlier by Eurasianist member P. Arapov). The uncovering of the TREST as a Soviet provocation caused a serious morale blow to the Eurasianists and discredited their public image. In the late 1920s, Eurasianists polarized and became divided in to two groups, the left Eurasianists, who were becoming increasingly pro-Soviet and pro-communist and
13447-692: Was exiled to the Far North of Russia. The Slavophiles at first mistook Chaadayev for one of them, but later, on realizing their mistake, bitterly denounced and disclaimed him. Chaadayev fought Slavophilism all of his life. His first Philosophical Letter has been labeled the "opening shot" of the Westernizer-Slavophile controversy which was dominant in Russian social thought of the nineteenth century. He wrote in his "first letter": We are an exception among people. We belong to those who are not an integral part of humanity but exist only to teach
13566-405: 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
13685-421: 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
13804-411: Was that Russia had lagged behind Western countries and had contributed nothing to the world's progress and concluded that Russia must start de novo. As a result, they included criticism of Russia's intellectual isolation and social backwardness. When in 1836 the first edition (and only one published during his life) of the philosophical letters was published in the Russian magazine Telescope, its editor
13923-402: 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
14042-460: Was to be true to her historical mission. His ideas influenced both the Westernizers (who supported bringing Russia into accord with developments in Europe by way of various degrees of liberal reform) and Slavophiles (who supported Russian Orthodoxy and national culture.) Most of his works have been edited by his biographer, Mikhail Gershenzon (two volumes, Moscow, 1913–14), whose study of
14161-530: Was used to suppress dissent . Living under house arrest following his declaration of insanity, Chaadayev's next work was entitled, fittingly, "Apologie d'un Fou" [which has been translated as " Apology of a Madman" but may better be translated as " Apologia of a Madman"] (1837). It opens with a quote from Samuel Coleridge stating "O my brethren! I have told/ Most bitter truth, but without bitterness." In this brilliant but uncompleted work he maintained that Russia must follow her inner lines of development if she
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