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120-621: Kaliningrad Oblast ( Russian : Калининградская область , romanized :  Kaliningradskaya oblastʹ ) is the westernmost federal subject of the Russian Federation , in Central and Eastern Europe . It is a semi-exclave situated on the Baltic Sea . The oblast is surrounded by two European Union and NATO members: Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north and east. The largest city and administrative centre of

240-674: 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

360-651: 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 the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and

480-519: 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

600-601: A Posener or Prussian by dialect and character? Distinct features hardly exist." While the north of East Prussia was overwhelmingly German, the south was majority Slavic and mostly composed of Poles and Masurians . There was also a slight Lithuanian majority in the north-eastern area of East Prussia, Lithuania Minor . Regional and local identities were particularly strong in East Prussia - local Polish population often identified with Masuria rather than Poland, and Prussian Lithuanians also did not actively identify themselves with

720-515: A breakdown by county. However, the majority of East Prussian Polish and Lithuanian inhabitants were Lutherans , not Catholics like their ethnic kinsmen across the border in the Russian Empire . Only in southern Warmia , Catholic Poles —so called Warmians (not to be confused with predominantly Protestant Masurians )—comprised the majority of population, numbering 26,067 people (~81%) in county Allenstein (Polish: Olsztyn ) in 1837. In

840-439: A climate gradually transitioning from oceanic to humid continental depending on distance from the Baltic Sea moderation. It remains very mild by Russian standards with winters above freezing without the hot summers associated with the Russian interior on similar latitudes. The local climate is slightly wetter than similar latitudes farther west, but infrequent ice days lead to low snow accumulation regardless. Anton Alikhanov

960-669: 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) Second Peace of Thorn (1466) The treaty was signed in the Artus Court, and afterward a mass was held in the Gothic Franciscan Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary to celebrate the peace treaty. The treaty concluded

1080-660: A great number of German Catholics, are willing to vote for a Polish party candidate". By the end of the 19th century, East Prussia had a significant Polish minority, and German nationalist circles warned of the prospect of Polonization of East Prussia. The perceived weakness of Germanness of East Prussia was also reinforced by the Ostflucht , as East Prussia suffered from both under-industrialisation and rural overpopulation. After 1876, farm prices in East Prussia fell by 20 percent, which encouraged local landowners to hire foreign workers from Congress Poland , incidentally strengthening

1200-558: 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

1320-484: 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

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1440-464: A lesser extent also Ukrainians and Belarusians. Some historians speculate that it may have originally been offered to the Lithuanian SSR because the resolution from the conference specifies that Kaliningrad's border would be at the (pre-war) Lithuanian frontier. According to some historians, Joseph Stalin created it as an oblast separate from the Lithuanian SSR because it further separated

1560-588: 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

1680-622: 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

1800-658: A monument to Stalin stood on Victory Square. In 1973, the town hall was turned into the House of Soviets. In 1975, the trolleybus was launched again. In 1980, a concert hall was opened in the building of the former Lutheran Church of the Holy Family. In 1986, the Kreuzkirche building was transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1957, an agreement was signed and later came into force which delimited

1920-526: 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

2040-539: 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,

2160-481: 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

2280-401: 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

2400-610: 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

2520-712: Is adjacent to the Baltic Sea should pass from a point on the eastern shore of the Bay of Danzig to the east, north of Braunsberg  – Goldep , to the meeting point of the frontiers of Lithuania , the Polish Republic and East Prussia . The Conference has agreed in principle to the proposal of the Soviet Government concerning the ultimate transfer to the Soviet Union of the city of Koenigsberg and

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2640-488: 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

2760-624: 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

2880-573: 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

3000-630: Is now the Kaliningrad Oblast used to be inhabited by the Old Prussians and other Western Balts , prior to the Teutonic conquest in the early Late Middle Ages . Afterwards, it was settled by Germans (especially the western part), Lithuanians (especially Lithuania Minor ) and Poles (especially Königsberg , Polish : Królewiec , and the current southern border strip). The Old Prussians became extinct due to Germanisation in

3120-564: 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

3240-402: 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

3360-569: 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

3480-585: 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

3600-543: Is the 230 m (750 ft) Gora Dozor hill near the tripoint of the Poland–Russia border / Lithuania–Russia border . As a semi-exclave of Russia, it is surrounded by Poland ( Pomeranian and Warmian-Masurian Voivodeships ), Lithuania ( Klaipėda , Marijampolė , and Tauragė Counties ) and the Baltic Sea. The end of the river Neman forms part of the Lithuania–Russia border . Notable geographical features include

3720-518: 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

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3840-470: 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

3960-1000: 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

4080-589: 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 the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as

4200-413: 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

4320-1082: The Curonian Lagoon (shared with Lithuania) and the Vistula Lagoon (shared with Poland). The oblast's largest river is the Pregolya . The river starts as a confluence of the Instruch and the Angrapa and drains into the Baltic Sea through the Vistula Lagoon. Its length, strictly under the name "Pregolya", is 123 km (76 mi); when including the Angrapa, is it 292 km (181 mi) long. Major cities and towns include: † Pre-1946 (the German-language names were also used in English in this period) Kaliningrad Oblast has

4440-599: The Potsdam Agreement of 1 August 1945, the city became part of the Soviet Union pending the final determination of territorial borders at an anticipated peace settlement. This final determination eventually took place on 12 September 1990 when the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany was signed. The excerpt from the initial agreement pertaining to the partition of East Prussia, including

4560-619: The Prince-Bishopric of Warmia , all of which formed the autonomous province of Royal Prussia (later also part of the larger Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown ), which was considered the exclusive property of the Polish king and Polish kingdom. Later, some disagreements arose concerning certain prerogatives that Royal Prussia and the cities held, like Danzig's privileges . The region possessed certain privileges such as

4680-565: The Stutthof concentration camp , the Oflag 52, Oflag 60 and Dulag Luft prisoner-of-war camps , and a camp for Romani people in Königsberg (see Romani Holocaust ). On 29 August 1944, Soviet troops reached the border of East Prussia. By January 1945, they had taken all of East Prussia except for the area around Königsberg. Many inhabitants fled west at this time. During the last days of

4800-871: The Thirteen Years' War which had begun in February 1454 with the revolt of the Prussian Confederation , led by the cities of Danzig (Gdańsk) , Elbing (Elbląg) , Kulm (Chełmno) and Toruń , and the Prussian gentry against the rule of the Teutonic Knights in the Monastic State , in order to join the Kingdom of Poland . Both sides agreed to seek confirmation from Pope Paul II and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III , but

4920-584: 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

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5040-721: 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

5160-536: The 19th century, East Prussia was commonly viewed by German commentators as culturally backwards and a part of the "German mission in the East" rather than a core German territory. Pan-Germanist politician Ernst Hasse criticised the lack of folk identity and imagined community : "It is the case that there is almost no common folk identity [Landsmannschaften] among the Poseners and Prussians at all. [...] Who can recognise

5280-519: 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

5400-415: The Baltic states from the West. Others think that the reason was that the region was far too strategic for the USSR to leave it in the hands of another SSR other than the Russian one. In the 1950s, Nikita Khrushchev offered the entire Kaliningrad Oblast to the Lithuanian SSR but Antanas Sniečkus refused to accept the territory because it would add at least a million ethnic Russians to Lithuania proper. In

5520-412: 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

5640-425: The French. The Court of Prussia fled to Königsberg, asking for Russian help. Russia intervened, leading to the bloody Battle of Eylau and Battle of Friedland in 1807. Following a French victory in the latter, both sides signed the Treaties of Tilsit . In 1817, East Prussia had 796,204 Protestants , 120,123 Catholics , 2,389 Jews , and 864 Mennonites . In 1824, shortly before its merger with West Prussia ,

5760-445: The Germans fail. Moreover, both these national minorities in East Prussia are bound to the soil by centuries of tradition: they are not comparative new-comers like the majority of the Germans there. For these reasons, the Poles and Lithuanians in that province hardly ever emigrate from the land of their birth, especially as the emigration in question is not so attractive for them as for the Germans: proceeding to central or western Germany,

5880-450: The Germans to send many troops to their East provinces. Later, Hindenburg and Ludendorff pushed Russia back at the battle of Tannenberg , thereby liberating East Prussia from Russian troops. Yet Russian troops remained in the easternmost part of the region until early 1915. During World War II, the Hohenbruch concentration camp  [ de ] was operated at modern Gromovo mostly for Polish prisoners, as well as several subcamps of

6000-474: The Germans, and rarely emigrated. Discussing the situation in East Prussia, Polish geographer Stanisław Srokowski remarked: The Poles who live in the southern and western parts of East Prussia and the Lithuanians of the north-west have succeeded better than the Germans in reconciling their mode of life with their earnings. This has, of course, led to a lower standard of life, but it has enabled them to adapt themselves to actual conditions and even to prosper where

6120-409: 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,

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6240-468: 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

6360-444: The Kingdom of Prussia and annex the territory, which was then to be offered to Poland as part of a territorial exchange desired by Russia. The territory was occupied and annexed by Russia in 1758 during the Seven Years' War before being returned to Prussia in 1762 when Russia switched sides in the war . It was then reorganized into the province of East Prussia within the Kingdom of Prussia in 1773. The current oblast also contains

6480-482: The Lithuanian military threat. In 1454, following a request by the anti-Teutonic Prussian Confederation , the territory was incorporated to the Kingdom of Poland by King Casimir IV Jagiellon , an event that sparked the Thirteen Years' War (1454–1466) . After Poland's victory in the war with the Second Peace of Thorn , the State of the Teutonic Order became a vassal of Poland, also considered an integral part of "one and indivisible" Kingdom of Poland. During this war,

6600-413: The Lithuanian nation. Moreover, confessional identity often prevailed over the national one - German authorities were concerned about the "Catholic-Polish axis"; German Catholics were alienated from the German nation because of the Kulturkampf legislation, and tended to support the Polish national movement. An East German newspaper Thorner Zeitung reported in 1871 that "not only Polish Catholics, but also

6720-411: 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

6840-449: The Polish element in the region. The increased Slavic immigration to the region generated by the requirement of the Junkers for cheap labour and better economic conditions in West Germany caused many German inhabitants to leave the region. Most Germans moved to work in the industrial heartland of western Germany, while others migrated abroad. Poles and Lithuanians of East Prussia also had much higher birth-rate and natural increase rates than

6960-430: The Polish side stressed (and the Teutonic side agreed) that this confirmation would not be needed for validation of the treaty. The peace talks were held in Nieszawa (present-day Mała Nieszawka ) from 23 September 1466, and in the final stages moved to Toruń. In the treaty, the Teutonic Order renounced any claims to the territories of Gdańsk/Eastern Pomerania and Chełmno Land , which were reintegrated with Poland, and

7080-807: 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

7200-458: 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

7320-405: 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

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7440-428: The Soviet era, the city was completely closed and, with the exception of rare visits of friendship from neighboring Poland, it was practically not visited by foreigners. In 1950, there were 1,165,000 inhabitants, which was only half the number of the pre-war population. The old city was not restored, and the ruins of the Königsberg Castle were demolished in the late 1960s, on Leonid Brezhnev 's personal orders, despite

7560-449: The Teutonic Order was obliged to swear an oath of allegiance to the reigning Polish king within six months of taking office, and any new territorial acquisitions by the Teutonic Order, also outside Prussia , would also be incorporated into Poland. The Grand Master became a prince and counselor of the Polish king and the Kingdom of Poland. Poles were to be admitted to the Teutonic Order. The Teutonic Knights were obliged to help Poland in

7680-409: The Teutonic Order founded the city of Königsberg (modern Kaliningrad), naming it in honour of Ottokar II of Bohemia . The Northern Crusades , including the Lithuanian Crusade , were partly motivated by colonization . The German colonist peasants, craftsmen, and merchants were predominantly concentrated in the southern part of the Teutonic State and did not move into Nadruvia and Skalvia due to

7800-402: The Teutonic Order's Prussian branch and established himself as ruler of the Duchy of Prussia , the first Protestant state in Europe. Königsberg was the residence of the Duke of Prussia from 1525 until 1701, and was the Duchy of Prussia's capital until 1660, when the capital moved to Berlin . Polish and Lithuanian culture blossomed in Königsberg, with the city being the place of publication of

7920-442: The USSR Mikhail Kalinin . Kalinin was unrelated to the city, and there were already cities named in honour of Kalinin in the Soviet Union, namely Kalinin (now Tver) and Kaliningrad (now Korolev, Moscow Oblast ). The German language was replaced with the Russian language, and the remaining German population was expelled between 1947 and 1948. The territory was then re-populated with Soviet citizens , mostly ethnic Russians but to

8040-403: 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

8160-413: The area adjacent to it as described above, subject to expert examination of the actual frontier. U.S. president Harry Truman and British prime minister Clement Attlee supported the proposal of the Conference at the forthcoming peace settlement. In 1946, Königsberg was added as a semi-exclave to the Russian SFSR and renamed Kaliningrad, after the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of

8280-404: The area surrounding Königsberg, is as follows (note that Königsberg is spelt "Koenigsberg" in the original document): VI. CITY OF KOENIGSBERG AND THE ADJACENT AREA The Conference examined a proposal by the Soviet Government that pending the final determination of territorial questions at the peace settlement, the section of the western frontier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which

8400-426: The border between the Polish People's Republic (a Soviet satellite state at the time) and the Soviet Union. In 2010, the German magazine Der Spiegel published a report claiming that Kaliningrad had been offered to Germany in 1990 (against payment). The offer was not seriously considered by the West German government which, at the time, saw reunification with East Germany as a higher priority. However, this story

8520-403: 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

8640-751: The capital of the Teutonic state was moved from Marienburg (now Malbork ) to Königsberg in 1457. When the rulers of the Prussia were vassals of the King of Poland from 1466 to 1660, there were few German colonists. After the Teutonic Order lost the war of 1519–1521 with Poland , the Teutonic Order remained a vassal of the Kingdom of Poland. In 1525, Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg secularized

8760-531: The change is that Mikhail Kalinin , a member of the Soviet Politburo , was among those responsible for the Katyn massacre , having co-signed the order to murder thousands of Polish prisoners of war. Kaliningrad is the only Russian Baltic Sea port that is ice-free all year and hence plays an important role in the maintenance of the country's Baltic Fleet. The oblast is mainly flat, as the highest point

8880-572: 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

9000-513: The event of war, and were forbidden to wage war against Catholics without the consent of Polish kings. Any prisoners of war on both sides were to be released. The treaty also dismissed any possibility of releasing the Teutonic Order from dependence to Poland or of any revision of the terms of the treaty by referring to any foreign authority, including imperial and papal. The territories directly held by Poland were already organized into three voivodeships ( Chełmno , Pomeranian , Malbork ) and

9120-413: 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,

9240-466: The federal government, granting them autonomy. However, this agreement was abolished on 31 May 2002. After 1991, some ethnic Germans emigrated to the area, such as Volga Germans from other parts of Russia and Kazakhstan . These Germans are overwhelmingly Russian-speaking and as such were rejected for resettlement within Germany under Germany's new rules. A similar migration by Poles from the lands of

9360-456: 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

9480-650: The first Polish and Lithuanian-language cathechisms (by Jan Seklucjan and Martynas Mažvydas ), the first Polish translation of the New Testament , Grammatica Litvanica , the first Lithuanian grammar book, and the Albertina University being the second oldest university of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , after receiving a royal privilege from King Sigismund II Augustus in 1560. Polish printing continued for centuries with

9600-530: The first half of the 18th century. The Lithuanian-inhabited areas of the Teutonic State were known as Lithuania Minor , which encompassed all of modern Kaliningrad Oblast until the 18th century. In the 13th century, the Teutonic Order conquered the region and established the State of the Teutonic Order , a theocracy . In 1255, on the foundations of a destroyed Sambian settlement known as Tvanksta ,

9720-852: The former Soviet Union to the Kaliningrad Oblast occurred at this time as well. The situation has begun to change, albeit slowly. Germany, Lithuania, and Poland have renewed contact with Kaliningrad Oblast, through town twinning and other projects. This has helped to promote interest in the history and culture of the East Prussian and Lietuvininkai communities. In July 2007, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov declared that if US-controlled missile defense systems were deployed in Poland, then nuclear weapons might be deployed in Kaliningrad. On 5 November 2008, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said that installing missiles in Kaliningrad

9840-518: The former would really be going to a foreign country, amongst people not speaking their language and having other customs than theirs. The Memel Territory ( Klaipėda region ), formerly part of northeastern East Prussia as well as Prussian Lithuania, was annexed by Lithuania in 1923. In 1938, Nazi Germany radically renamed about a third of the place names of this area, replacing Old Prussian and Lithuanian names with newly invented German names. In September 1914, after hostilities began between Germany on

9960-631: 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

10080-428: The goods being imported into Kaliningrad by rail. Food, medicine, and passenger travel were exempted. Russia protested against the sanctions and announced it would increase shipments by sea. In May 2023, Poland officially adopted a new name for the Kaliningrad region, changing it from "Obwód Kaliningradzki" to "Obwód Królewiecki", Królewiec being the historical Polish name for the city of Kaliningrad. The reason given for

10200-480: 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

10320-625: The last Polish publication in 1931. In 1577, the Duke of Prussia forbade serfs —who were mostly Old Prussians, Lithuanians, and Masurians —to leave the land that was the property of the German knights who became proprietary nobles. In 1618, the Duchy merged with the Margraviate of Brandenburg to form Brandenburg-Prussia , remaining under Polish suzerainty until 1660. There was strong opposition to

10440-683: The minting of its own coins, its own Diet meetings (see the Prussian estates ), its own military, and its own administrative usage of the German language for minority. A conflict over the right to name and approve Bishops in Warmia, resulted in the War of the Priests (1467–1479). Eventually, Royal Prussia became integrated into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , but retained some distinctive features until

10560-524: 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

10680-548: The now abandoned village of Narmeln (Polish: Polski ), which was not part of Ducal Prussia, but of the Pomeranian Voivodeship of the Kingdom of Poland until its annexation by the Kingdom of Prussia the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, and is thus part of the historic region of Pomerania . After the defeats of Jena–Auerstedt , the Kingdom of Prussia was invaded and Berlin was occupied by

10800-608: The one hand and France and Russia on the other, the German Army was about to seize Paris, and the French urged Russia to attack East Prussia. Nicholas II launched a major attack, resulting in a Russian victory in the Battle of Gumbinnen . The Russian army arrived at the outskirts of the city of Königsberg but did not take it and settled at Insterburg . This Russian victory and East Prussia's occupation by Russia saved Paris by forcing

10920-515: 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

11040-461: 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,

11160-446: 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

11280-453: 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

11400-459: 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

11520-440: The population of East Prussia was 1,080,000 people. According to Karl Andree , Germans were slightly more than half of the people, while 280,000 (~26%) were ethnically Polish and 200,000 (~19%) were ethnically Lithuanian . As of 1819, there were also 20,000-strong ethnic Curonian and Latvian minorities as well as 2,400 Jews , according to Georg Hassel. Similar numbers are given by August von Haxthausen in his 1839 book, with

11640-418: 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

11760-479: 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

11880-472: 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 ,

12000-455: The protests of architects, historians and residents of the city. The reconstruction of the oblast, threatened by hunger in the immediate post-war years, was carried out through an ambitious policy of oceanic fishing with the creation of one of the main fishing harbours of the USSR in Kaliningrad city. Fishing not only fed the regional economy but also was a basis for social and scientific development, in particular oceanography. From 1953 to 1962,

12120-579: The province ( oblast ) is the city of Kaliningrad , formerly known as Königsberg . Half of the population of the oblast lives in Kaliningrad City proper. The port city of Baltiysk is Russia's only port on the Baltic Sea that remains ice-free in winter. Kaliningrad Oblast had a population of roughly 1 million in the Russian Census of 2021 . The area of Kaliningrad oblast is 15,125 square kilometers (5,840 square miles). The territory

12240-580: The region and the rest of Russia now must pass through members of NATO and the EU. Thus far, the EU has rejected Russian proposals for visa-free travel between Kaliningrad and the rest of Russia. Travel arrangements based on the Facilitated Transit Document (FTD) and Facilitated Rail Transit Document (FRTD) have been made. Kaliningrad Oblast's geographic isolation has badly affected its economic situation. Concurrent significant reduction in

12360-558: The region of Elbing (Elbląg) and Marienburg (Malbork) , and the Bishopric of Warmia , which were also recognized as part of Poland. The eastern part remained with the Teutonic Order as a fief and protectorate of Poland, also considered an integral part of the "one and indivisible" Kingdom of Poland. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Chełmno became a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Gniezno . From now on, every Grand Master of

12480-491: 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

12600-571: The same ceremony they still also pledged allegiance to Poland. In 1724, King Frederick William I of Prussia prohibited Poles , Samogitians and Jews from settling in Lithuania Minor, and initiated German colonization to change the region's ethnic composition. In 1734–1736, Königsberg was the place of stay of Polish King Stanisław Leszczyński during the War of the Polish Succession . In 1756 Russia decided to go to war with

12720-440: The separation of the region from Poland, especially in Königsberg. A confederation was formed in the city to maintain Poland's sovereignty over the city and region. The Brandenburg Elector and his army, however, entered the city and abducted and imprisoned the leader of the city's anti-Elector opposition Hieronymus Roth . In 1663, the city burghers, forced by Elector Frederick William , swore an oath of allegiance to him, however, in

12840-497: The size of the Russian military garrison has hurt as well, since previously the military was a major local employer. Some of the region's cultural heritage, most notably the Königsberg Cathedral , was restored in the 1990s, as citizens started to examine previously ignored German past. On 12 January 1996, Kaliningrad Oblast and Sverdlovsk Oblast became the first oblasts of Russia to sign a power-sharing treaty with

12960-679: 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

13080-512: 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

13200-786: 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

13320-511: 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

13440-412: The war, over two million people fled, anticipating imminent Red Army conquest, and were evacuated by sea . Initially, at the end of World War II in 1945, the current southern border strip passed under Polish control with Polish administration organized in the towns of Gierdawy and Iławka , however, the area was eventually annexed by the Soviet Union and included within the Kaliningrad Oblast. Under

13560-761: 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 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

13680-551: Was almost a certainty. These plans were suspended in January 2009, but implemented in October 2016. In 2011, a long-range Voronezh radar was commissioned to monitor missile launches within about 6,000 km (3,700 mi). The radar is situated in the settlement of Pionersky in Kaliningrad Oblast. A few months after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine , Lithuania started implementing EU sanctions , which blocked about 50% of

13800-405: 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

13920-421: 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

14040-724: Was formerly the northern part of the Prussian province of East Prussia ; the remaining southern part of the province is today part of the Warmian–Masurian Voivodeship in Poland. With the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II , the territory was annexed to the Russian SFSR by the Soviet Union . Following the post-war migration and flight and expulsion of Germans , the territory was populated with Soviet citizens, mostly Russians . The territory of what

14160-426: Was governor of Kaliningrad Oblast from 2017 until May 2024, when he was appointed as Minister of Industry and Trade. The region's legislative body is the 40-seat Kaliningrad Oblast Duma. As of the 2021 census , the population of the oblast was 1,027,678. Earlier censuses recorded a population of 955,281 in 2002 and 871,283 in 1989 . Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to

14280-507: Was later denied by Mikhail Gorbachev . The independence of Lithuania in 1990 and full dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 isolated Kaliningrad from the rest of Russia, having previously been joined by other Soviet republics. This isolation became more severe when both Poland and Lithuania joined NATO and the European Union and imposed strict border controls on Kaliningrad Oblast. All military and civilian land links between

14400-402: 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

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