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146-549: Gatchina ( Russian : Га́тчина , IPA: [ˈɡatːɕɪnə] ) is a town and the administrative center of Gatchinsky District in Leningrad Oblast , Russia . It lies 45 kilometers (28 mi) south-south-west of St. Petersburg , along the E95 highway which links Saint Petersburg and Pskov . Population: 92,937 ( 2010 Census ) ; 88,420 ( 2002 Census ) ; 79,714 ( 1989 Soviet census ) . It

292-674: 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

438-519: 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

584-540: A quality of life competition for Russian towns and cities, being ranked first in Category III, the category for cities with a population of under 100,000. In 2010, Gatchina's status as an Historical city of Russia was revoked. The town has notably been known under various names during its history. As common with larger urban areas under the Soviet Union , Gatchina was renamed to reflect the changed ideals of

730-597: A dome representing the heavens crowded with colourful Biblical figures. Other notable pilgrimage churches include the Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers by Balthasar Neumann (1743 – 1772). Johann Michael Fischer was the architect of Ottobeuren Abbey (1748 – 1766), another Bavarian Rococo landmark. The church features, like much of the rococo architecture in Germany, a remarkable contrast between

876-429: 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) Rococo Rococo , less commonly Roccoco ( / r ə ˈ k oʊ k oʊ / rə- KOH -koh , US also / ˌ r oʊ k ə ˈ k oʊ / ROH -kə- KOH ; French: [ʁɔkɔko] or [ʁokoko] ), also known as Late Baroque ,

1022-558: 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

1168-484: 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

1314-539: A lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian

1460-588: 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

1606-622: 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

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1752-408: A monumental entrance. Upon Orlov's death in 1783, Gatchina Palace was bought by Catherine from his heirs, and gave it to her son Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich , the future Tsar Paul I. During his ownership, Paul made alterations to the palace, but also began developing the village of Gatchina into a town using experience from his travels around Europe . After ascending to the throne, Paul granted Gatchina

1898-583: A paper mill, and to food industry. Gatchina is an important railway node. One railway, running north to south, connects the Baltiysky railway station in St. Petersburg with Dno and Nevel . Within the town limits, suburban trains in this direction stop at the platform of Tatyanino and the station of Gatchina-Varshavskaya . Another railway, also from the Baltiysky railway station, arrives to Gatchina from

2044-526: 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

2190-650: A sense of movement in every direction. It was most commonly found in the interiors of churches, usually closely integrated with painting and the architecture. Religious sculpture followed the Italian baroque style, as exemplified in the theatrical altarpiece of the Karlskirche in Vienna. Early Rococo or Rocaille sculpture in France sculpture was lighter and offered more movement than the classical style of Louis XIV. It

2336-516: A theatrical exuberance. On the walls of new Paris salons, the twisting and winding designs, usually made of gilded or painted stucco, wound around the doorways and mirrors like vines. One of the earliest examples was the Hôtel Soubise in Paris (1704 – 1705), with its famous oval salon decorated with paintings by Boucher, and Charles-Joseph Natoire . The best known French furniture designer of

2482-539: 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,

2628-481: 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

2774-401: 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

2920-610: 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

3066-468: Is an exceptionally ornamental and dramatic style of architecture, art and decoration which combines asymmetry, scrolling curves, gilding, white and pastel colours, sculpted moulding, and trompe-l'œil frescoes to create surprise and the illusion of motion and drama. It is often described as the final expression of the Baroque movement. The Rococo style began in France in the 1730s as a reaction against

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3212-488: 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

3358-624: 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

3504-573: 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

3650-564: 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

3796-762: Is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on the Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has

3942-402: 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

4088-569: 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

4234-614: Is sometimes referred to as Zopfstil . Rococo remained popular in certain German provincial states and in Italy, until the second phase of neoclassicism, " Empire style ", arrived with Napoleonic governments and swept Rococo away. The ornamental style called rocaille emerged in France between 1710 and 1750, mostly during the regency and reign of Louis XV ; the style was also called Louis Quinze . Its principal characteristics were picturesque detail, curves and counter-curves, asymmetry, and

4380-585: 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

4526-518: 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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4672-470: 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

4818-1000: 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

4964-413: 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

5110-594: The Red Guards and Cossack units of General Pyotr Krasnov . The Reds won the battle, which had avoided the palace, and on November 1, they held a rally outside the palace in the main square, where Pavel Dybenko encouraged the Cossack units stationed in the palace to surrender and not to oppose the Red authorities. Kerensky left Gatchina Palace that night, and it was occupied by Red troops the following day. In May 1918,

5256-508: The Sevres Porcelain manufactory and produced small-scale works, usually about love and gaiety, for production in series. A Rococo period existed in music history , although it is not as well known as the earlier Baroque and later Classical forms. The Rococo music style itself developed out of baroque music both in France, where the new style was referred to as style galant ("gallant" or "elegant" style), and in Germany, where it

5402-668: The UNESCO World Heritage Site 's " Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments ". Another popular tourist attraction in Gatchina is the Prioratsky Palace . Gatchina has placed highly in quality-of-life rankings in Russia. Gatchina was first documented in 1499 under the name Khotchino as a village in possession of the Novgorod Republic . In the 17th century it

5548-584: 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

5694-641: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to

5840-580: The administrative center of Gatchinsky District . As an administrative division, it is incorporated within Gatchinsky District as Gatchinskoye Settlement Municipal Formation . As a municipal division , Gatchinskoye Settlement Municipal Formation is incorporated within Gatchinsky Municipal District as Gatchinskoye Urban Settlement . In Gatchina, there are several enterprises related to timber industry, including

5986-792: The assassination of Alexander II in 1881, Gatchina Palace was passed to his shaken son, the new Tsar Alexander III , who was advised that he and his family would be safer in Gatchina as opposed to at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. Alexander spent most of his life at Gatchina Palace, which became known as "The Citadel of Autocracy " after the Tsar's reactionary policies. Here he signed decrees, held diplomatic receptions, theatrical performances, masquerades and costumed balls, and other events and entertainment. Alexander III introduced some technological modernizations new to Russia at

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6132-450: The assassination of Tsar Peter III three years earlier, resulting in her becoming empress. Between 1766 and 1788, Count Orlov built the massive Great Gatchina Palace in place of the original manor, with 600 rooms, an extensive English landscape park over 7 square kilometers (2.7 sq mi), with an adjacent zoo and a horse farm. A triumphal arch was erected to a design by the architect of Gatchina Palace, Antonio Rinaldi , forming

6278-751: The commedia dell'arte , city street vendors, lovers and figures in fashionable clothes, and pairs of birds. Johann Joachim Kändler was the most important modeller of Meissen porcelain , the earliest European factory, which remained the most important until about 1760. The Swiss-born German sculptor Franz Anton Bustelli produced a wide variety of colourful figures for the Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory in Bavaria, which were sold throughout Europe. The French sculptor Étienne-Maurice Falconet (1716 – 1791) followed this example. While also making large-scale works, he became director of

6424-498: The porcelain figure, or small group of figures, initially replacing sugar sculptures on grand dining room tables, but soon popular for placing on mantelpieces and furniture. The number of European factories grew steadily through the century, and some made porcelain that the expanding middle classes could afford. The amount of colourful overglaze decoration used on them also increased. They were usually modelled by artists who had trained in sculpture. Common subjects included figures from

6570-534: The 18th century, a reaction against the Rococo style occurred, primarily against its perceived overuse of ornamentation and decoration. Led by Christoph Willibald Gluck , this reaction ushered in the Classical era . By the early 19th century, Catholic opinion had turned against the suitability of the style for ecclesiastical contexts because it was "in no way conducive to sentiments of devotion". Russian composer of

6716-519: 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

6862-680: The A120 Highway, which encircles St. Petersburg. A paved road connects Gatchina with Kingisepp via Volosovo. There are also local roads. Gatchina is the site of the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute . Gatchina is twinned with: Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of

7008-506: The Bavarian pilgrimage churches, the exterior is very simple, with pastel walls, and little ornament. Entering the church the visitor encounters an astonishing theatre of movement and light. It features an oval-shaped sanctuary, and a deambulatory in the same form, filling in the church with light from all sides. The white walls contrasted with columns of blue and pink stucco in the choir, and the domed ceiling surrounded by plaster angels below

7154-471: 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

7300-545: The French original. The German style was characterized by an explosion of forms that cascaded down the walls. It featured molding formed into curves and counter-curves, twisting and turning patterns, ceilings and walls with no right angles, and stucco foliage which seemed to be creeping up the walls and across the ceiling. The decoration was often gilded or silvered to give it contrast with the white or pale pastel walls. The Belgian-born architect and designer François de Cuvilliés

7446-578: The Gatchina Palace for its collections of art. On January 26, 1944, the Germans abandoned Lindemannstadt during their retreat, setting fire to Gatchina Palace and vandalizing much of the park. The town was quickly retaken by the Red Army , and two days later it was renamed back to its original pre-Soviet name, Gatchina. After the war, Gatchina was rebuilt to Soviet standards, and became home to

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7592-404: The Gatchina Palace, such as indoor heaters , electric lights , a telephone network, non-freezing water pipes and a modern sewage system. His son, the future Tsar Nicholas II and the last Russian Tsar, spent his youth in the Gatchina Palace, although he and his family would make Tsarskoye Selo his home. His mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna , widow of Alexander III, was the patron of

7738-532: 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,

7884-661: The Great to create fountain sculpture for Sanssouci Park , Prussia (1740s). Étienne-Maurice Falconet (1716 – 1791) was another leading French sculptor during the period. Falconet was most famous for his Bronze Horseman statue of Peter the Great in St. Petersburg, but he also created a series of smaller works for wealthy collectors, which could be reproduced in a series in terracotta or cast in bronze. The French sculptors, Jean-Louis Lemoyne , Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne , Louis-Simon Boizot , Michel Clodion , Lambert-Sigisbert Adam and Jean-Baptiste Pigalle all produced sculpture in series for collectors. In Italy, Antonio Corradini

8030-590: 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

8176-609: The Marquis of Marigny, and was named director general of the King's Buildings . He turned official French architecture toward the neoclassical. Cochin became an important art critic; he denounced the petit style of Boucher, and called for a grand style with a new emphasis on antiquity and nobility in the academies of painting and architecture. The beginning of the end for Rococo came in the early 1760s as figures like Voltaire and Jacques-François Blondel began to voice their criticism of

8322-526: 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

8468-431: The Petersburg Institute of Nuclear Physics. The extent of the Gatchina Palace's devastation was extraordinary, and initially was considered irreparable damage. Restoration works continued for over 60 years, and some pieces of the art collection were recovered from safe keeping and returned to Gatchina. Today, one section of the Gatchina Palace is partially completed and certain state rooms and the Arsenal Halls are now open to

8614-418: The Renaissance. In the late 17th and early 18th century, rocaille became the term for a kind of decorative motif or ornament that appeared in the late Louis XIV style , in the form of a seashell interlaced with acanthus leaves. In 1736 the designer and jeweler Jean Mondon published the Premier Livre de forme rocquaille et cartel , a collection of designs for ornaments of furniture and interior decoration. It

8760-428: The Rococo had a spiritual aspect to it which led to its widespread use in church interiors, particularly in Central Europe, Portugal, and South America. The word rococo was first used as a humorous variation of the word rocaille by Pierre-Maurice Quays (1777-1803) Rocaille was originally a method of decoration , using pebbles, seashells, and cement, which was often used to decorate grottoes and fountains since

8906-807: 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

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9052-458: 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

9198-405: 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

9344-424: The Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Maria Fyodorovna, the mother of Nicholas II, his wife the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna , as well as their daughters Grand Duchess Olga , Grand Duchess Tatiana , Grand Duchess Maria , and Grand Duchess Anastasia . In March 1917, the Russian Empire collapsed upon the abdication of Nicholas II following the February Revolution , leading to a decline in Gatchina's importance as

9490-403: 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

9636-735: The arrival of Chinoiserie , often in the form of lacquered and gilded commodes, called falcon de Chine of Vernis Martin , after the ebenist who introduced the technique to France. Ormolu , or gilded bronze, was used by master craftsmen including Jean-Pierre Latz . Latz made a particularly ornate clock mounted atop a cartonnier for Frederick the Great for his palace in Potsdam . Pieces of imported Chinese porcelain were often mounted in ormolu (gilded bronze) rococo settings for display on tables or consoles in salons. Other craftsmen imitated Japanese lacquered furniture, and produced commodes with Japanese motifs. British Rococo tended to be more restrained. Thomas Chippendale 's furniture designs kept

9782-616: The arts. Kent travelled to Italy with Lord Burlington between 1712 and 1720, and brought back many models and ideas from Palladio. He designed the furniture for Hampton Court Palace (1732), Lord Burlington's Chiswick House (1729), London, Thomas Coke's Holkham Hall , Norfolk, Robert Walpole's Houghton Hall , for Devonshire House in London, and at Rousham House . Mahogany made its appearance in England in about 1720, and immediately became popular for furniture, along with walnut wood. The Rococo began to make an appearance in England between 1740 and 1750. The furniture of Thomas Chippendale

9928-523: The ballroom ceiling of the Ca' Rezzonico in the quadraturo manner, giving the illusion of three dimensions. Tiepolo travelled to Germany with his son during 1752 – 1754, decorating the ceilings of the Würzburg Residence , one of the major landmarks of the Bavarian Rococo. An earlier celebrated Venetian painter was Giovanni Battista Piazzetta , who painted several notable church ceilings. The Venetian Rococo also featured exceptional glassware, particularly Murano glass , often engraved and coloured, which

10074-424: The best known examples of the style. Boucher participated in all of the genres of the time, designing tapestries, models for porcelain sculpture, set decorations for the Paris Opera and Opéra-Comique , and decor for the Fair of Saint-Laurent . Other important painters of the Fête Galante style included Nicolas Lancret and Jean-Baptiste Pater . The style particularly influenced François Lemoyne , who painted

10220-459: The boundaries between the art genres, and are characterised by a light-filled weightlessness, festive cheerfulness and movement. The Rococo decorative style reached its summit in southern Germany and Austria from the 1730s until the 1770s. There it dominates the church landscape to this day and is deeply anchored there in popular culture. It was first introduced from France through the publications and works of French architects and decorators, including

10366-403: 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

10512-592: The city becoming one of the first centers of aviation and engine technology in Russia. The pilot Pyotr Nesterov was trained at the Gatchina airfield and made his first long-distance flight from Gatchina to Kiev . Gatchina Palace remained one of the official imperial residences of Tsar Nicholas II, who was presiding over annual military parades and celebrations of the Imperial Russian Army garrisons, stationed in Gatchina until 1917. During World War I , major medical hospitals in Gatchina were visited by

10658-475: The city of Gatchina, the palace and its parks. Gatchina was honored as the best-kept city of Russia at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris ( Exposition Universelle ). The quality of life, education, medical services, and public safety in Gatchina were recognized as the best, and it was recommended as an example for other cities in Russia. In 1910, one of the first airfields in Russia was established in Gatchina, with

10804-433: The complex frames made for mirrors and paintings, which were sculpted in plaster and often gilded; and the use of vegetal forms (vines, leaves, flowers) intertwined in complex designs. The furniture also featured sinuous curves and vegetal designs. The leading furniture designers and craftsmen in the style included Juste-Aurele Meissonier , Charles Cressent , and Nicolas Pineau . The Rocaille style lasted in France until

10950-572: 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

11096-528: The curves and feel, but stopped short of the French heights of whimsy. The most successful exponent of British Rococo was probably Thomas Johnson , a gifted carver and furniture designer working in London in the mid-18th century. Elements of the Rocaille style appeared in the work of some French painters, including a taste for the picturesque in details; curves and counter-curves; and dissymmetry which replaced

11242-642: The curving lines and carved ornament of the French Rocaille, but with a particular Venetian variation; the pieces were painted, often with landscapes or flowers or scenes from Guardi or other painters, or Chinoiserie , against a blue or green background, matching the colours of the Venetian school of painters whose work decorated the salons. Notable decorative painters included Giovanni Battista Tiepolo , who painted ceilings and murals of both churches and palazzos, and Giovanni Battista Crosato who painted

11388-773: The decoration of palaces and churches. The sculpture was closely integrated with the architecture; it was impossible to know where one stopped and the other began. In the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, (1721 – 1722), the vaulted ceiling of the Hall of the Atlantes is held up on the shoulders of muscular figures designed by Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt . The portal of the Palace of the Marqués de Dos Aguas in Valencia (1715 – 1776)

11534-404: The decoration. The main ornaments of Rococo are: asymmetrical shells, acanthus and other leaves, birds, bouquets of flowers, fruit, musical instruments, angels and Chinoiserie ( pagodas , dragons, monkeys, bizarre flowers and Chinese people). The style often integrated painting, moulded stucco, and wood carving, and quadratura , or illusionist ceiling paintings, which were designed to give

11680-458: The early German Rococo is Würzburg Residence (1737 – 1744) constructed for Prince-Bishop Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn of Würzburg by Balthasar Neumann . Neumann had travelled to Paris and consulted with the French rocaille decorative artists Germain Boffrand and Robert de Cotte . While the exterior was in more sober Baroque style, the interior, particularly the stairways and ceilings,

11826-413: 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,

11972-456: 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

12118-653: The following characteristics, which Baroque does not: The Rocaille style, or French Rococo, appeared in Paris during the reign of Louis XV , and flourished between about 1723 and 1759. The style was used particularly in salons, a new style of room designed to impress and entertain guests. The most prominent example was the salon of the Princess in Hôtel de Soubise in Paris, designed by Germain Boffrand and Charles-Joseph Natoire (1735 – 1740). The characteristics of French Rococo included exceptional artistry, especially in

12264-647: The four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to

12410-692: 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

12556-480: 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

12702-464: The government. This first came in honouring Leon Trotsky. However, with the feud between Trotsky and Stalin at a high this name was to become problematic. Thus, the city was renamed again in honour of the Soviet troops. Unlike other regions that underwent this process, Gatchina has a more complex history leading to multiple variations. Within the framework of administrative divisions , Gatchina serves as

12848-531: The impression that those entering the room were looking up at the sky, where cherubs and other figures were gazing down at them. Materials used included stucco, either painted or left white; combinations of different coloured woods (usually oak, beech or walnut); lacquered wood in the Japanese style, ornament of gilded bronze, and marble tops of commodes or tables. The intent was to create an impression of surprise, awe and wonder on first view. Rococo tends to have

12994-404: The interiors, and soft pastel colours framed with large hooded windows and cornices on the exteriors featuring rocaille motifs, such as asymmetrical shells and rocks. Plafonds often featured rococo scrollwork surrounding allegorical paintings of ancient Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. Flooring was often inlaid with parquetry designs formed from different woods to create elaborate designs in

13140-549: The largest effect on the Rococo style. The Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo , assisted by his son, Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo , was invited to paint frescoes for the Würzburg Residence (1720 – 1744). The most prominent painter of Bavarian rococo churches was Johann Baptist Zimmermann , who painted the ceiling of the Wieskirche (1745 – 1754). Rococo sculpture was theatrical, sensual and dynamic, giving

13286-765: The lavish decoration of the ceiling of the Salon of Hercules at the Palace of Versailles , completed in 1735. Paintings with fétes gallant and mythological themes by Boucher, Pierre-Charles Trémolières and Charles-Joseph Natoire decorated the famous salon of the Hôtel Soubise in Paris (1735 – 1740). Other Rococo painters include: Jean François de Troy (1679 – 1752), Jean-Baptiste van Loo (1685 – 1745), his two sons Louis-Michel van Loo (1707 – 1771) and Charles-Amédée-Philippe van Loo (1719 – 1795), his younger brother Charles-André van Loo (1705 – 1765), Nicolas Lancret (1690 – 1743), and Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732 – 1806). In Austria and Southern Germany, Italian painting had

13432-484: The mid-18th century, and while it became more curving and vegetal, it never achieved the extravagant exuberance of the Rococo in Bavaria, Austria and Italy. The discoveries of Roman antiquities beginning in 1738 at Herculaneum and especially at Pompeii in 1748 turned French architecture in the direction of the more symmetrical and less flamboyant neo-classicism . Artists in Italy, particularly Venice , also produced an exuberant Rococo style. Venetian commodes imitated

13578-414: The mistress of Louis XV contributed to the decline of the Rococo style. In 1750 she sent her brother, Abel-François Poisson de Vandières , on a two-year mission to study artistic and archeological developments in Italy. He was accompanied by several artists, including the engraver Charles-Nicolas Cochin and the architect Soufflot . They returned to Paris with a passion for classical art. Vandières became

13724-464: The more formal and geometric Louis XIV style . It was known as the "style Rocaille ", or "Rocaille style". It soon spread to other parts of Europe, particularly northern Italy, Austria, southern Germany, Central Europe and Russia. It also came to influence other arts, particularly sculpture, furniture, silverware, glassware, painting, music, theatre, and literature. Although originally a secular style primarily used for interiors of private residences,

13870-579: The movement of the baroque with exuberance, though the French rocaille never reached the extravagance of the Germanic rococo. The leading proponent was Antoine Watteau , particularly in The Embarkation for Cythera (1717), Louvre , in a genre called Fête galante depicting scenes of young nobles gathered together to celebrate in a pastoral setting. Watteau died in 1721 at the age of thirty-seven, but his work continued to have influence through

14016-616: The museum was re-opened by the Reds "for the victorious popular masses of the Russian Revolution" in Gatchina. From 1918 to 1941, the Gatchina Palace and parks were open to public as a national museum. On February 14, 1923, Gatchina was renamed Trotsk ( Russian : Троцк ) by the new Soviet authorities, after Leon Trotsky . After Joseph Stalin became General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party (b) , Trotsky

14162-423: The northwest and has two stops, Mariyenburg and Gatchina-Passazhirskaya-Baltiyskaya . Yet another railway runs south of the town center from east to west and connects Mga via Ulyanovka with Volosovo . The railway station on this line in Gatchina is Gatchina-Tovarnaya-Baltiyskaya . The M20 Highway connecting St. Petersburg and Pskov , crosses Gatchina from north to south. South of Gatchina, it crosses

14308-524: 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

14454-515: 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

14600-461: 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,

14746-446: 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

14892-453: 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

15038-478: The period was Juste-Aurèle Meissonnier (1695 – 1750), who was also a sculptor, painter. and goldsmith for the royal household. He held the title of official designer to the Chamber and Cabinet of Louis XV. His work is well known today because of the enormous number of engravings made of his work which popularized the style throughout Europe. He designed works for the royal families of Saxony and Portugal . Italy

15184-531: The period, with its emphasis on decorative mythology and gallantry, soon inspired a reaction, and a demand for more "noble" themes. While the Rococo continued in Germany and Austria, the French Academy in Rome began to teach the classic style. This was confirmed by the nomination of Jean François de Troy as director of the academy in 1738, and then in 1751 by Charles-Joseph Natoire . Madame de Pompadour ,

15330-459: 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

15476-418: 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

15622-479: 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

15768-472: 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 ,

15914-504: The public. Other areas of the palace, including those of Tsar Alexander III, remain closed and unrestored. In 1990, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , Gatchina Palace and surviving buildings in Gatchina's historic center became UNESCO World Heritage Sites , as part of the wider Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments . In 1999, Gatchina was awarded in the Most Comfortable City of Russia,

16060-472: The regularity of the facade and the overabundance of decoration in the interior. In Great Britain, rococo was called the "French taste" and had less influence on design and the decorative arts than in continental Europe, although its influence was felt in such areas as silverwork, porcelain, and silks. William Hogarth helped develop a theoretical foundation for Rococo beauty. Though not mentioning rococo by name, he argued in his Analysis of Beauty (1753) that

16206-692: The reign of Frederick the Great and combined influences from France, Germany (especially Saxony ) and the Netherlands . Its most famous adherent was the architect Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff . Furthermore, the painter Antoine Pesne and even King Frederick himself influenced Knobelsdorff's designs. Famous buildings in the Frederician style include Sanssouci Palace , the Potsdam City Palace , and parts of Charlottenburg Palace . The art of François Boucher and other painters of

16352-491: 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

16498-557: The rest of the century. A version of Watteau's painting titled Pilgrimage to Cythera was purchased by Frederick the Great of Prussia in 1752 or 1765 to decorate his palace of Charlottenburg in Berlin. The successor of Watteau and the Féte Galante in decorative painting was François Boucher (1703 – 1770), the favorite painter of Madame de Pompadour . His work included the sensual Toilette de Venus (1746), which became one of

16644-505: The sculptor Claude III Audran , the interior designer Gilles-Marie Oppenordt , the architect Germain Boffrand , the sculptor Jean Mondon, and the draftsman and engraver Pierre Lepautre . Their work had an important influence on the German Rococo style, but does not reach the level of buildings in southern Germany. German architects adapted the Rococo style but made it far more asymmetric and loaded with more ornate decoration than

16790-483: The stairway led the visitors up through a stucco fantasy of paintings, sculpture, ironwork and decoration, with surprising views at every turn. In the 1740s and 1750s, a number of notable pilgrimage churches were constructed in Bavaria , with interiors decorated in a distinctive variant of the rococo style. One of the most notable examples is the Wieskirche (1745 – 1754) designed by Dominikus Zimmermann . Like most of

16936-400: The status of Imperial City, an honorary designation for towns that possessed a royal palace . Gatchina Palace was expanded and altered numerous times by its subsequent imperial owners, with the addition of Rococo interiors designed by Rinaldi and Vincenzo Brenna , and executed by Italian stucco workers and Russian craftsmen. In 1854, a railroad connecting Gatchina and Saint Petersburg

17082-419: The style of the 18th century, overloaded with twisting ornaments". In 1829, the author Stendhal described rococo as "the rocaille style of the 18th century". In the 19th century, the term was used to describe architecture or music which was excessively ornamental. Since the mid-19th century, the term has been accepted by art historians . While there is still some debate about the historical significance of

17228-583: The style, Rococo is now often considered as a distinct period in the development of European art . Rococo features exuberant decoration, with an abundance of curves, counter-curves, undulations and elements modeled on nature. The exteriors of Rococo buildings are often simple, while the interiors are entirely dominated by their ornament. The style was highly theatrical, designed to impress and awe at first sight. Floor plans of churches were often complex, featuring interlocking ovals; In palaces, grand stairways became centrepieces, and offered different points of view of

17374-420: The superficiality and degeneracy of the art. Blondel decried the "ridiculous jumble of shells, dragons, reeds, palm-trees and plants" in contemporary interiors. By 1785, Rococo had passed out of fashion in France, replaced by the order and seriousness of Neoclassical artists like Jacques-Louis David . In Germany, late 18th-century Rococo was ridiculed as Zopf und Perücke ("pigtail and periwig"), and this phase

17520-679: 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

17666-459: 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

17812-851: The town and its palace became state property of the Russian Provisional Government , who converted it to a museum . Shortly afterwards, the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution and the outbreak of the Russian Civil War followed. It saw Gatchina loyal to the White Movement , and the palace was visited by President Alexander Kerensky of the deposed Russian Provisional Government on October 27, 1917. During Kerensky's visit, fighting broke out in Gatchina between detachments of

17958-786: 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

18104-520: The undulating lines and S-curves prominent in Rococo were the basis for grace and beauty in art or nature (unlike the straight line or the circle in Classicism ). Rococo was slow in arriving in England. Before entering the Rococo, British furniture for a time followed the neoclassical Palladian model under designer William Kent , who designed for Lord Burlington and other important patrons of

18250-511: 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

18396-467: The woodwork. Russian orthodox church architecture was also heavily influenced by rococo designs during the eighteenth century, often featuring a square Greek cross design with four equidistant wings. Exteriors were painted in light pastel colours such as blues and pinks, and bell towers were often topped with gilded onion domes. Frederician Rococo is a form of Rococo which developed in Prussia during

18542-528: Was Thomas Johnson , who in 1761, very late in the period, published a catalogue of Rococo furniture designs. These include furnishings based on rather fantastic Chinese and Indian motifs, including a canopy bed crowned by a Chinese pagoda (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum ). Other notable figures in the British Rococo included the silversmith Charles Friedrich Kandler. The Russian rococo style

18688-582: Was among the leading sculptors of the Rococo style. A Venetian, he travelled around Europe, working for Peter the Great in St. Petersburg, for the courts in Austria and Naples . He preferred sentimental themes and made several skilled works of women with faces covered by veils, one of which is now in the Louvre . The most elaborate examples of rococo sculpture were found in Spain, Austria and southern Germany, in

18834-746: Was another place where the Rococo flourished, both in its early and later phases. Craftsmen in Rome, Milan and Venice all produced lavishly decorated furniture and decorative items. The sculpted decoration included fleurettes, palmettes, seashells, and foliage, carved in wood. The most extravagant rocaille forms were found in the consoles , tables designed to stand against walls. The Commodes , or chests, which had first appeared under Louis XIV, were richly decorated with rocaille ornament made of gilded bronze. They were made by master craftsmen including Jean-Pierre Latz and also featured marquetry of different-coloured woods, sometimes placed in draughtsboard cubic patterns, made with light and dark woods. The period also saw

18980-458: Was completely drenched in sculpture carved in marble, from designs by Hipolito Rovira Brocandel. The El Transparente altar, in the major chapel of Toledo Cathedral is a towering sculpture of polychrome marble and gilded stucco, combined with paintings, statues and symbols. It was made by Narciso Tomé (1721 – 1732), Its design allows light to pass through, and in changing light it seems to move. A new form of small-scale sculpture appeared,

19126-550: Was encouraged in particular by Madame de Pompadour , mistress of Louis XV, who commissioned many works for her chateaux and gardens. The sculptor Edmé Bouchardon represented Cupid engaged in carving his darts of love from the club of Hercules . Rococo figures also crowded the later fountains at Versailles , such as the Fountain of Neptune by Lambert-Sigisbert Adam and Nicolas-Sebastien Adam (1740). Based on their success at Versailles, they were invited to Prussia by Frederick

19272-406: Was exported across Europe. Works included multicolour chandeliers and mirrors with extremely ornate frames. In church construction, especially in the southern German-Austrian region, gigantic spatial creations are sometimes created for practical reasons alone, which, however, do not appear monumental, but are characterized by a unique fusion of architecture, painting, stucco, etc., often eliminating

19418-405: 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

19564-421: 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

19710-553: Was given by Peter the Great to his sister, Natalya Alexeyevna , and after her death in 1716 Peter founded an Imperial Hospital and Apothecary there. In 1765, it became the property of Count Orlov . In 1765, Catherine the Great , Empress of the Russian Empire , purchased Gatchina Manor from Prince Boris Kurakin , which featured the village and a small manor . Gatchina was gifted by Catherine to one of her favorites, Count Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov , who reportedly organized

19856-534: Was gradually exiled (and later killed on Stalin's orders), and the town was renamed Krasnogvardeysk ( Красногварде́йск , Red Guard City ) on August 2, 1929. Gatchina was occupied by Nazi Germany from Saturday, September 13, 1941, following the German invasion of Russia during World War II . The Germans renamed the town Lindemannstadt , in honor of the Wehrmacht general Georg Lindemann , and looted much of

20002-584: Was introduced largely by Empress Elisabeth and Catherine the Great , during the eighteenth century by court architects such as Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli . Rastrelli's work at palaces such as the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg and the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo incorporated many features of western European rococo architecture, including grand rooms ornamented with gold leaf, mirrors, and large windows for natural light on

20148-603: Was much lighter and decorative. The Prince-Bishop imported the Italian Rococo painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in 1750 – 1753 to create a mural over the top of the three-level ceremonial stairway. Neumann described the interior of the residence as "a theatre of light". The stairway was also the central element in a residence Neumann built at the Augustusburg Palace in Brühl (1743 – 1748). In that building

20294-557: Was one of the first to create a Rococo building in Germany, with the pavilion of Amalienburg in Munich, (1734 – 1739), inspired by the pavilions of the Trianon and Marly in France. It was built as a hunting lodge, with a platform on the roof for shooting pheasants. The Hall of Mirrors in the interior, by the painter and stucco sculptor Johann Baptist Zimmermann , was far more exuberant than any French Rococo. Another notable example of

20440-411: Was opened, and the territory of Gatchina was expanded with several villages in the vicinity being incorporated into the city. The following year Gatchina Palace came under the ownership of Tsar Alexander II , who used it as his second residence. Alexander built a hunting village south of Gatchina into a retreat where he and his guests could enjoy the unspoiled wilderness of northwestern Russia. Following

20586-582: Was passed to Livonia and then to Sweden in a series of wars, until the early years of the Great Northern War at the turn of the 1700s when the area was returned to Russia . In 1703, Gatchina found itself in the southern vicinity of the new Russian capital, Saint Petersburg , which was being constructed 45 kilometers (28 mi) north at the mouth of the Neva River . Despite technically still belonging to Swedish Ingria , in 1708, Gatchina

20732-644: Was previously known as Khotchino , Gatchina (until February 14, 1923), Trotsk (until August 2, 1929), and Krasnogvardeysk (until January 28, 1944). Gatchina, the largest town in Leningrad Oblast, is best known as the location of the Great Gatchina Palace , one of the main residences of the Russian Imperial Family during the 18th and 19th centuries. The historic center and Gatchina Palace are part of

20878-409: Was referred to as empfindsamer Stil ("sensitive style"). It can be characterized as light, intimate music with extremely elaborate and refined forms of ornamentation . Exemplars include Jean Philippe Rameau , Louis-Claude Daquin and François Couperin in France; in Germany, the style's main proponents were C. P. E. Bach and Johann Christian Bach , two sons of J.S. Bach . In the second half of

21024-537: Was the closest to the Rococo style, In 1754 he published "Gentleman's and Cabinet-makers' directory", a catalogue of designs for rococo, chinoiserie and even Gothic furniture, which achieved wide popularity, going through three editions. Unlike French designers, Chippendale did not employ marquetry or inlays in his furniture. The predominant designer of inlaid furniture were Vile and Cob, the cabinet-makers for King George III . Another important figure in British furniture

21170-419: Was the first appearance in print of the term rocaille to designate the style. The carved or moulded seashell motif was combined with palm leaves or twisting vines to decorate doorways, furniture, wall panels and other architectural elements. The term rococo was first used in print in 1825 to describe decoration which was "out of style and old-fashioned". It was used in 1828 for decoration "which belonged to

21316-402: 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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