111-573: Kuban Cossack Chorus ( Russian : Кубанский казачий хор , romanized : Kubanskij kazačij chor , Ukrainian : Кубанський козачий хор , romanized : Kubanśkyj kozačyj chor ) is one of the leading Folkloric ensembles in Russia . Its repertoire and performances reflect the songs, dances and folklore of the Kuban Cossacks . The modern Kuban Cossack Chorus sets the date of its creation as 14 October 1811, when its predecessor,
222-674: 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
333-519: 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
444-483: A centre of folk culture of Kuban was set up. Its mandate is to collect, study and revive cultural traditions of the Kuban Cossacks. The Centre has children's and teenage choirs and folk-instrument ensembles. It also collects traditional clothing and relics of the past from village life. Cossack songs and dances, mostly in Russian, a few in the Ukrainian language, are a standard part of its programmes. In addition
555-610: A critic and as a journalist marked the birth of Russian magazine culture which included him devising and contributing heavily to one of the most influential literary magazines of the 19th century, the Sovremennik ( The Contemporary , or Современник ). Pushkin inspired the folk tales and genre pieces of other authors: Leskov , Yesenin and Gorky . His use of Russian formed the basis of the style of novelists Ivan Turgenev , Ivan Goncharov and Leo Tolstoy , as well as that of subsequent lyric poets such as Mikhail Lermontov . Pushkin
666-551: 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) Alexander Pushkin Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (6 June [ O.S. 26 May] 1799 – 10 February [ O.S. 29 January] 1837) was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era . He
777-484: 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
888-588: 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
999-622: 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
1110-526: 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
1221-495: A short story frequently anthologized in English translation. Pushkin's works also provided fertile ground for Russian composers. Glinka 's Ruslan and Lyudmila is the earliest important Pushkin-inspired opera, and a landmark in the tradition of Russian music. Tchaikovsky 's operas Eugene Onegin (1879) and The Queen of Spades ( Pikovaya Dama , 1890) became perhaps better known outside of Russia than Pushkin's own works of
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#17327767760371332-539: 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,
1443-481: 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
1554-401: 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
1665-610: 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
1776-410: Is a work of such complexity that, though it is only about a hundred pages long, translator Vladimir Nabokov needed two full volumes of material to fully render its meaning into English. Because of this difficulty in translation, Pushkin's verse remains largely unknown to English readers. Even so Pushkin has profoundly influenced western writers such as Henry James . Pushkin wrote The Queen of Spades ,
1887-571: Is also known for his short stories. In particular his cycle The Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin , including The Shot , were well received. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "the narrative logic and the plausibility of that which is narrated, together with the precision, conciseness – economy of the presentation of reality – all of the above is achieved in Tales of Belkin , especially, and most of all in
1998-488: 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
2109-624: 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
2220-535: Is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet, as well as the founder of modern Russian literature . Pushkin was born into the Russian nobility in Moscow. His father, Sergey Lvovich Pushkin, belonged to an old noble family. One of his maternal great-grandfathers was Major-General Abram Petrovich Gannibal , a nobleman of African origin who was kidnapped from his homeland by the Ottomans , then freed by
2331-573: 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
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#17327767760372442-492: Is now a museum . Pushkin had four children from his marriage to Natalia: Maria (b. 1832), Alexander (b. 1833), Grigory (b. 1835) and Natalia (b. 1836), the last of whom married morganatically Prince Nikolaus Wilhelm of Nassau of the House of Nassau-Weilburg and was granted the title of Countess of Merenberg . Her daughter Sophie married Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich of Russia , a grandson of Emperor Nicholas I . Only
2553-564: 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
2664-402: 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
2775-569: 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
2886-585: 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
2997-532: 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 is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of
3108-518: 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
3219-470: 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
3330-1000: 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
3441-785: The Black Sea Host Singing Chorus ( Черноморский Войсковый певческий хор , Černomorskij Vojskovyj pevčeskij xor ), was formed. The founders of this choir were Kiril Rossinsky and regent Grigory Grechinsky. Over the next hundred years in addition to singing the Russian Orthodox Liturgy in Slavonic , the choir regularly gave public concerts throughout the Krasnodar Krai . These concerts would include classical works as well as folk songs in addition to sacred works. In summer of 1921, under
Kuban Cossack Choir - Misplaced Pages Continue
3552-573: The British Consulate-General in Saint Petersburg , to be his second. Magenis did not formally accept but on 26 January (7 February) approached Viscount d'Archiac to attempt a reconciliation; however d'Archiac refused to speak with him as he was not yet officially Pushkin's second. Magenis, unable to find Pushkin in the evening, sent him a letter through a messenger at 2 o'clock in the morning declining to be his second, as
3663-413: 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
3774-646: The Decossackization programme of the Bolshevik authorities, the Cossack Host was dissolved, being revived only in 1936. The choir was then headed by Grigory Kontsevich and Yakov Taranko, formally regents of the old Kuban Chorus. A year later, during the Purges, Kontsevich was arrested and then executed. The choir however continued to grow, and in 1939 with the addition of a dance group it was renamed
3885-600: The Emperor's political police and unable to publish, Pushkin wrote his most famous play, Boris Godunov . His novel in verse Eugene Onegin was serialized between 1825 and 1832. Pushkin was fatally wounded in a duel with his wife's alleged lover and her sister's husband, Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès , also known as Dantes-Gekkern, a French officer serving with the Chevalier Guard Regiment . Pushkin's father, Sergei Lvovich Pushkin (1767–1848),
3996-539: The Ensemble of Kuban Cossack Dance ( Ансамбль песни и пляски кубанских казаков , Ansamblʹ pesni i pljaski kubanskix kazakov ). Such was the professionalisation of this and other such 'folk ensembles' under Stalin's regime that the group in effect consisted of professional musicians and dancers, graduates of Soviet music and dance schools and not necessarily of Cossack descent. During the Second World War ,
4107-490: The Russian invasion of Ukraine . These monuments, along with any toponymy named after him, are now illegal in Ukraine following the implementation of a law that bans symbols "dedicated to persons who publicly, including … in literary and other artistic works, supported, glorified, or justified Russian imperial policy". The centennial of Pushkin's death in 1937 was one of the most significant literary commemorations of
4218-584: 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
4329-641: 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
4440-519: 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
4551-471: 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
Kuban Cossack Choir - Misplaced Pages Continue
4662-642: The Chorus transforms poems into songs, such as those of Alexander Pushkin and Taras Shevchenko . It also performs famous non-Cossack songs such as Katyusha . Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It
4773-481: The French Enlightenment , to which he would remain permanently indebted throughout his life, especially Voltaire , whom he described as "the first to follow the new road, and to bring the lamp of philosophy into the dark archives of history". Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform, and emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals. That angered the government and led to his transfer from
4884-532: 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,
4995-528: The Gregorian calendar) 1837 Pushkin sent a "highly insulting letter" to Gekkern. The only answer to that letter could be a challenge to a duel, as Pushkin knew. Pushkin received the formal challenge to a duel through his sister-in-law, Ekaterina Gekkerna, approved by d'Anthès, on the same day through the attaché of the French Embassy, Viscount d'Archiac. Pushkin asked Arthur Magenis , then attaché to
5106-590: 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
5217-526: 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
5328-512: The Romantic" and that "he is simultaneously Romantic and not Romantic". Pushkin is usually credited with developing Russian literature. He is seen as having originated the highly nuanced level of language which characterizes Russian literature after him, and he is also credited with substantially augmenting the Russian lexicon. Whenever he found gaps in the Russian vocabulary, he devised calques . His rich vocabulary and highly-sensitive style are
5439-681: The Russian Emperor and raised in the Emperor's court household as his godson . He published his first poem at the age of 15, and was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum . Upon graduation from the Lycée, Pushkin recited his controversial poem " Ode to Liberty ", one of several that led to his exile by Emperor Alexander I . While under strict surveillance by
5550-807: 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
5661-458: 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
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#17327767760375772-848: The Siberian Chorus he previously helped direct. Due to his efforts, in 1975 the choir became laureates of the First All Russian screening competition of state folk choirs in Moscow, and again in 1984. In October 1988, by order of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the choir was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples , and in 1990 became a laureate of the Taras Shevchenko State Ukrainian Prize in Ukraine. Its highest award
5883-458: 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
5994-539: The State Russian folk choirs. Three years later the re-established chorus debuted at the Bulgarian international Festival of Folklore, where it earned the first of many titles it would receive in numerous festivals and competitions. In 1974, Viktor Gavrilovich Zakharchenko assumed the office of artistic director. He continues to lead the choir to this day. Zakharchenko was a local transferred back to Kuban from
6105-467: 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
6216-403: 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
6327-818: The capital in May 1820. He went to the Caucasus and to Crimea and then to Kamianka and Chișinău in Bessarabia . He joined the Filiki Eteria , a secret organization whose purpose was to overthrow Ottoman rule in Greece and establish an independent Greek state. He was inspired by the Greek Revolution and when the war against the Ottoman Empire broke out, he kept a diary recording the events of
6438-410: The choir has been recognised as a direct successor to the old Host choir of 1811. Despite its turbulent past, the Chorus has grown to become one of the leading concert ensembles in Russia. It regularly tours abroad and has appeared in Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Norway, China, Vietnam, Poland, Czechia, Bulgaria, Serbia and Australia. In 1990 on the basis of the Kuban Cossack Chorus,
6549-460: 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
6660-526: 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
6771-432: The drama was not staged until 2007. Around 1825–1829 he met and befriended the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz , during exile in central Russia. In 1829 he travelled through the Caucasus to Erzurum to visit friends fighting in the Russian army during the Russo-Turkish War . At the end of 1829 Pushkin wanted to set off on a journey abroad, the desire reflected in his poem Let's go, I'm ready . He applied for permission for
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#17327767760376882-565: The emperor's Titular Counsel of the National Archives. However, because insurgents in the Decembrist Uprising (1825) in Saint Petersburg had kept some of Pushkin's earlier political poems, the emperor retained strict control of everything Pushkin published and he was banned from travelling at will. During that same year (1825) Pushkin also wrote what would become his most famous play, the drama Boris Godunov , while at his mother's estate. He could not, however, gain permission to publish it until five years later. The original and uncensored version of
6993-413: 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,
7104-402: 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
7215-517: The foundation for modern Russian literature. His accomplishments set new records for development of the Russian language and culture. He became the father of Russian literature in the 19th century, marking the highest achievements of the 18th century and the beginning of literary process of the 19th century. He introduced Russia to all the European literary genres as well as a great number of West European writers. He brought natural speech and foreign influences to create modern poetic Russian. Though his life
7326-505: 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
7437-480: 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
7548-415: The group toured several fronts and performed for Red Army soldiers and particularly the Kuban Cossack regiments that served in the ranks. In 1961, under the initiative of Nikita Khrushchev the ensemble was dissolved once again. In this year many similar folkloric groups were dissolved in the USSR . In 1968, under the leadership of Sergey Chernobay the ensemble was once again re-established as part of
7659-499: The heroine of Eugene Onegin . Authorities summoned Pushkin to Moscow after his poem Ode to Liberty was found among the belongings of the rebels from the Decembrist Uprising (1825). After his exile in 1820 Pushkin's friends and family continually petitioned for his release, sending letters and meeting Emperor Alexander I and then Emperor Nicholas I on the heels of the Decembrist Uprising. Upon meeting Emperor Nicholas I Pushkin obtained his release from exile and began to work as
7770-610: The journey but received negative response from Nicholas I on 17 January 1830. Around 1828 Pushkin met Natalia Goncharova , then 16 years old and one of the most talked-about beauties of Moscow. After much hesitation Natalia accepted a proposal of marriage from Pushkin in April 1830, but not before she received assurances that the Tsarist government had no intention of persecuting the libertarian poet. Later Pushkin and his wife became regulars of court society. They officially became engaged on 6 May 1830 and sent out wedding invitations. Owing to an outbreak of cholera and other circumstances,
7881-471: The lines of Alexander and Natalia still remain. Natalia's granddaughter, Nadejda , married into the extended British royal family, her husband being the uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh , and is the grandmother of the present Marquess of Milford Haven . Descendants of the poet now live around the globe in the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and the United States. Critics consider many of his works masterpieces, such as
7992-727: The national uprising. He stayed in Chișinău until 1823 and wrote two Romantic poems which brought him acclaim: The Prisoner of the Caucasus and The Fountain of Bakhchisaray . In 1823, Pushkin moved to Odessa , where he again clashed with the government, which sent him into exile on his mother's rural estate of Mikhailovskoye , near Pskov , from 1824 to 1826. In Mikhaylovskoye, Pushkin wrote nostalgic love poems which he dedicated to Elizaveta Vorontsova, wife of Malorossia 's General-Governor . Then Pushkin worked on his verse-novel Eugene Onegin . In Mikhaylovskoye, in 1825, Pushkin wrote
8103-524: 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
8214-515: 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
8325-461: 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,
8436-446: 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
8547-453: 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
8658-481: The period of Pushkin's growing literary influence, he met one of Russia's other influential early writers, Nikolai Gogol . After reading Gogol's 1831–1832 volume of short stories Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka , Pushkin supported him and would feature some of Gogol's most famous short stories in the magazine The Contemporary , which he founded in 1836. By the autumn of 1836, Pushkin was falling into greater and greater debt and faced scandalous rumours that his wife
8769-474: The poem The Bronze Horseman and the drama The Stone Guest , a tale of the fall of Don Juan . His poetic short drama Mozart and Salieri (like The Stone Guest , one of the so-called four Little Tragedies , a collective characterization by Pushkin himself in 1830 letter to Pyotr Pletnyov ) was the inspiration for Peter Shaffer 's Amadeus as well as providing the libretto (almost verbatim) to Rimsky-Korsakov 's opera Mozart and Salieri . Pushkin
8880-612: The poem To*** . It is generally believed that he dedicated this poem to Anna Kern , but there are other opinions. Poet Mikhail Dudin believed that the poem was dedicated to the serf Olga Kalashnikova. Pushkinist Kira Victorova believed that the poem was dedicated to the Empress Elizaveta Alekseyevna. Vadim Nikolayev argued that the idea about the Empress was marginal and refused to discuss it, while trying to prove that poem had been dedicated to Tatyana Larina,
8991-459: 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
9102-418: 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
9213-503: The possibility of a peaceful settlement had already been quashed, and the traditional first task of the second was to try to bring about a reconciliation. The pistol duel with d'Anthès took place on 27 January (8 February) at the Black River , without the presence of a second for Pushkin. The duel they fought was of a kind known as a "barrier duel". The rules of this type dictated that the duellists began at an agreed distance. After
9324-545: The prestigious Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoye Selo , near Saint Petersburg, his talent was already widely recognized on the Russian literary scene. At the Lyceum, he was a student of David Mara, known in Russia as David de Boudry [ fr ] , a younger brother of French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat . After school, Pushkin plunged into the vibrant and raucous intellectual youth culture of St. Petersburg, which
9435-479: 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
9546-472: 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 ,
9657-491: 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
9768-1330: The same name. Mussorgsky 's monumental Boris Godunov (two versions, 1868–9 and 1871–2) ranks as one of the very finest and most original of Russian operas. Other Russian operas based on Pushkin include Dargomyzhsky 's Rusalka and The Stone Guest ; Rimsky-Korsakov 's Mozart and Salieri , Tale of Tsar Saltan , and The Golden Cockerel ; Cui 's Prisoner of the Caucasus , Feast in Time of Plague , and The Captain's Daughter ; Tchaikovsky 's Mazeppa ; Rachmaninoff 's one-act operas Aleko (based on The Gypsies ) and The Miserly Knight ; Stravinsky 's Mavra , and Nápravník 's Dubrovsky . Additionally, ballets and cantatas , as well as innumerable songs , have been set to Pushkin's verse (including even his French-language poems, in Isabelle Aboulker 's song cycle " Caprice étrange "). Suppé , Leoncavallo and Malipiero have also based operas on his works. Composers Yudif Grigorevna Rozhavskaya , Galina Konstantinovna Smirnova , Yevgania Yosifovna Yakhina , Maria Semyonovna Zavalishina , Zinaida Petrovna Ziberova composed folk songs using Pushkin's text. The Desire of Glory , which has been dedicated to Elizaveta Vorontsova,
9879-560: The scholars Dieudonné Gnammankou and Hugh Barnes eventually conclusively established that Gannibal was instead born in Central Africa, in an area bordering Lake Chad in modern-day Cameroon . After education in France as a military engineer , Gannibal became governor of Reval and eventually Général en Chief (the third most senior army rank) in charge of the building of sea forts and canals in Russia. Born in Moscow, Pushkin
9990-531: The signal to begin, they walked towards each other, closing the distance. They could fire at any time they wished, but the duellist that shot first was required to stand still and wait for the other to shoot back at his leisure. D'Anthès fired first, critically wounding Pushkin; the bullet entered at his hip and penetrated his abdomen. D'Anthès was only lightly wounded in the right arm by Pushkin's shot. Two days later, at 2.45 pm on 29 January (10 February), Pushkin died of peritonitis . At Pushkin's wife's request he
10101-513: 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 a hard or soft counterpart, and
10212-450: The story The Stationmaster . Pushkin is the progenitor of the long and fruitful development of Russian realist literature, for he manages to attain the realist ideal of a concise presentation of reality". Pushkin himself preferred his verse novel Eugene Onegin , which he wrote over the course of his life and which, starting a tradition of great Russian novels, follows a few central characters but varies widely in tone and focus. Onegin
10323-679: 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
10434-459: 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
10545-786: 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
10656-511: 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
10767-473: The wedding was delayed for a year. The ceremony took place on 18 February 1831 (Old Style) in the Great Ascension Church on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street in Moscow. Pushkin's marriage to Goncharova was largely a happy one, but his wife’s characteristic flirtatiousness and frivolity would lead to his fatal duel seven years later, for Pushkin had a highly jealous temperament. In 1831, during
10878-580: Was Abram Petrovich Gannibal (1696–1781), an African page kidnapped and taken to Constantinople as a gift for the Ottoman Sultan and later transferred to Russia as a gift for Peter the Great . Abram wrote in a letter to Empress Elizabeth, Peter the Great's daughter, that Gannibal was from the town of "Lagon", largely on the basis of a mythical biography by Gannibal's son-in-law Rotkirch. Vladimir Nabokov , when researching Eugene Onegin , cast serious doubt on this origin theory. Later research by
10989-598: Was analysed by Nikolai Gogol , his successor and pupil, and the great Russian critic Vissarion Belinsky , who produced the fullest and deepest critical study of Pushkin's work, which still retains much of its relevance. In the centennial year of Pushkin's death in 1937, a mass renaming of streets across the entire Soviet Union occurred in his honour. Prior to 2022, Pushkin was the third most common historical figure represented in Ukraine’s streets, but his monuments were removed and streets bearing his name were renamed following
11100-407: Was brief, he left examples of nearly every literary genre of his day: lyric poetry, narrative poetry, the novel, the short story, the drama, the critical essay and even the personal letter. According to Vladimir Nabokov , Pushkin's idiom combined all the contemporaneous elements of Russian with all he had learned from Derzhavin , Zhukovsky , Batyushkov , Karamzin and Krylov : His work as
11211-459: Was descended from a distinguished family of the Russian nobility that traced its ancestry back to the 12th century. Pushkin's mother, Nadezhda (Nadya) Ossipovna Gannibal (1775–1836), was descended through her paternal grandmother from German and Scandinavian nobility . She was the daughter of Ossip Abramovich Gannibal (1744–1807) and his wife, Maria Alekseyevna Pushkina (1745–1818). Ossip Abramovich Gannibal's father, Pushkin's great-grandfather,
11322-407: Was entrusted to nursemaids and French tutors, and spoke mostly French until the age of ten. He became acquainted with the Russian language through communication with household serfs and his nanny, Arina Rodionovna, whom he loved dearly and to whom he was more attached than to his own mother. He published his first poem at the age of 15. When he finished school, as part of the first graduating class of
11433-405: 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
11544-421: 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
11655-584: Was having a love affair. On 4 November, he sent a challenge to a duel to Georges d'Anthès , also known as Dantes-Gekkern. Jacob van Heeckeren , d'Anthès' adoptive father, asked that the duel be delayed by two weeks. With efforts by the poet's friends, the duel was cancelled. On 17 November, d'Anthès proposed to Natalia Goncharova's sister, Ekaterina. The marriage did not resolve the conflict. D'Anthès continued to pursue Natalia Goncharova in public and rumours that d'Anthès had married Natalia's sister just to save her reputation circulated. On 26 January (7 February in
11766-508: Was put in the coffin in evening dress, not in chamber-cadet uniform, the uniform provided by the emperor. The funeral service was initially assigned to St Isaac's Cathedral but was moved to Konyushennaya church. Many people attended. After the funeral the coffin was lowered into the basement, where it stayed until 3 February, when it was removed to Pskov province. Pushkin was buried in the grounds of Svyatogorsky monastery in present-day Pushkinskiye Gory , near Pskov, beside his mother. His last home
11877-541: Was received in 1993 when the choir was awarded the title of "Academic". During the post-USSR years, the Chorus has channeled its energy into the collection and rebirth of the Cossack traditions, demonstrating pride in Russian patriotism and local customs. In August 1995, Patriarch Alexius II allowed the Host to sing church liturgy once again, and from October 1996, by decree of Krasnodar Krai governor Aleksandr Tkachyov ,
11988-621: Was set to music by David Tukhmanov , as well as Keep Me, Mine Talisman – by Alexander Barykin and later by Tukhmanov. Pushkin is considered by many to be the central representative of Romanticism in Russian literature although he was not unequivocally known as a Romantic. Russian critics have traditionally argued that his works represent a path from Neoclassicism through Romanticism to Realism . An alternative assessment suggests that "he had an ability to entertain contrarities which may seem Romantic in origin, but are ultimately subversive of all fixed points of view, all single outlooks, including
12099-564: 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 a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It
12210-402: 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
12321-521: Was then the capital of the Russian Empire . In 1820, he published his first long poem, Ruslan and Ludmila , with much controversy about its subject and style. While at the Lyceum, Pushkin was heavily influenced by the Kantian liberal individualist teachings of Alexander Kunitsyn , whom Pushkin would later commemorate in his poem 19 October . Pushkin also immersed himself in the thought of
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