161-492: The Last Address ( Russian : "Последний адрес" , romanized : "Posledny adres" ) is a large-scale public memorial project designed to commemorate the memory of innocent people who died as a result of political repressions committed by the Soviet authorities . Its principle is "One name, one life, one sign". Within the framework of the project, a small, palm-sized, minimalist metal memorial sign of rectangular shape
322-674: 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
483-519: 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
644-479: A central part of what was called the Palace Square. The Palace Square served as St. Petersburg's nerve center by linking it to all the city's most important buildings. The presence of the Palace Square was extremely significant to the urban development of St. Petersburg, and while it became less of a nerve center later into the 20th century, its symbolic value was still very much preserved. Catherine acquired
805-627: A collection of 119 paintings in Paris from Count Baudouin in 1781. Catherine's favorite items to collect were believed to be engraved gems and cameos. At the inaugural exhibit of the Hermitage, opened by Charles, Prince of Wales in November 2000, there was an entire gallery devoted to representing and displaying Catherine's favorite items. In this gallery her cameos are displayed along with cabinet made by David Roentgen, which holds her engraved gems. As
966-486: 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) Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum (Russian: Государственный Эрмитаж , romanized : Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž , IPA: [ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ] ) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg , Russia. It
1127-567: A hermit or recluse. The word derives from Old French hermit , ermit "hermit, recluse", from Late Latin eremita , from Greek eremites , that means "people who live alone", which is in turn derived from ἐρημός ( erēmos ), "desert". Originally, the only building housing the collection was the "Small Hermitage". Today, the Hermitage Museum encompasses many buildings on the Palace Embankment and its neighbourhoods. Apart from
1288-484: 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
1449-588: 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
1610-622: 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
1771-448: A purely local one. The project team members are engaged in maintaining its website, databases on victims of repression and plaques, archival research, writing reports, coordinating the placement and organization of ceremonies for the unveiling of commemorative plaques, caring for them, and other related issues. All this work is carried out mainly on a volunteer basis. Funding of the project is fundamentally without government participation, as
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#17327827752241932-526: 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
2093-423: A sense of continuity with the past ("it was here"), which in turn contributes to the emotional personal experience of remembrance. The Last Address as a memorial project has a number of peculiarities. Unlike the usual territorially localized monuments, its plaques are part of everyday material culture, being scattered in many places in many cities. Thus, on the one hand, visualization of the scale of mass repressions
2254-535: A small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items (the numismatic collection accounts for about one-third of them). The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment , including the Winter Palace , a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace , Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya, and
2415-400: A «network» memorial scattered in different cities around the world. The Last Address is an entirely civic project and commemorative practice . Its key principle is that the initiative to install each plaque (as well as its payment) comes from one specific person who wanted to honor another specific person who died as a result of political repression. This can be a relative or close friend of
2576-539: A “Last Address” sign was the village Kupros of Yusvinsky District , Komi-Permyak Okrug . The memorial sign was installed on 11 August 2015 on the façade of the house that was the last residential address of peasant Valentin Startsev, declared by investigators “an active participant of the liquidated counterrevolutionary insurgent organization.” Investigators claimed that Startsev was “conducting counterrevolutionary defeatist agitation among kolkhoz members, trying to prove
2737-539: 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,
2898-481: 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
3059-401: 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
3220-610: 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
3381-418: Is achieved, and on the other hand, the audience of the memorial is maximized, because the plaques are visible to all people passing along the street - such a memorial is difficult to ignore. "Encounter" of people in public space with memorial signs makes them think. At the same time, while traditional memorials are dedicated to the memory of all victims as a whole, only sometimes singling out some of their groups,
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#17327827752243542-461: Is actually a mass public initiative and commemorative practice[3] around which a whole civil movement has been built. Its core consists of historians, human rights activists, journalists, artists and other interested people. At the same time, in each individual city the installation of plaques is supported by a local group of activists. Thus, the Last Address is both an all-Russian initiative and
3703-425: Is also important that around a large-scale initiative to create a memorial a community of people for whom this memory is important is formed. The key principle of the Last Address project is that the initiative to install each plaque comes from one specific person who wanted to honor the memory of another specific person who died as a result of Soviet political repression. This can be a relative or close friend of
3864-488: 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
4025-624: 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
4186-610: Is displayed in the General Staff Building (Saint Petersburg) . It features Matisse , Derain and other fauvists , Picasso , Malevich , Petrocelli , Kandinsky , Giacomo Manzù , Giorgio Morandi and Rockwell Kent . A large room is devoted to the German Romantic art of the 19th century, including several paintings by Caspar David Friedrich . The second floor of the Western wing features collections of
4347-418: Is hard not to empathize with. It is also of great importance to place memorial plaques not to a select group of famous people, but to all affected citizens. In this way, the authors of the memorial wanted to make people realize the importance of every human life and human life in general. The reference to profession serves to emphasize the idea that not only political figures were subjected to repression, but also
4508-400: Is installed on the house that became the last lifetime address of the victim of state arbitrariness. It bears the name of the murdered person, their year of birth, profession, dates of arrest, death and year of legal rehabilitation . On the left side of the plaque is a square hole, reminiscent of a photograph missing from the card. The aggregate of many such personalized memorial signs forms
4669-478: Is intended to memorialize the innocent people who died as a result of the criminal actions of the Soviet state. In their work to create the memorial, civil activists rely on the 1991 Russian law "On the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression". It defines the concept of political repressions, their time frame (from October 25 (November 7), 1917 to October 18, 1991), and proclaims the need to preserve
4830-573: 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
4991-430: Is not placed on the sign. Occasionally in such a situation, the occupation, position or affiliation to an organization may be indicated. If a person died not as a result of a firing squad, then the line about death is modified depending on its circumstances. In the left part of the sign there is a small square hole, through it you can see the bare wall of the house, to which the sign is attached. It evokes an association with
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5152-624: Is not the installation of millions of signs "on every house", but the memory and reflection that arise as a result of the initiative. Immediately after the October Revolution , the new authorities began a policy of state terror against the inhabitants of their country. According to researchers' estimates, during the existence of the Soviet regime millions of people suffered as a result of political repression , hundreds of thousands of them were killed. The memorial project The Last Address
5313-531: Is now closed. The rooms and galleries along the southern facade and in the western wing of the New Hermitage are now entirely devoted to Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting of the 17th century, including the large collections of Van Dyck , Rubens and Rembrandt . The first floor rooms on the southern facade of the Winter Palace are occupied by the collections of German fine art of
5474-564: 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
5635-402: 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
5796-442: Is required, and if the building belongs to any organization, its permission is required. In case of installation of the sign on the house-monument, which is under the protection of the state, the coordination is also held with the local authorities. In the course of negotiations with the residents of the house, the project volunteers conduct a lot of educational work among them: they tell about the history of political repressions, about
5957-569: 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
6118-585: 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
6279-518: 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
6440-470: 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
6601-742: The Alexander Palace , the Stroganov Palace , and the Yusupov Palace , as well as from other palaces of Saint Petersburg and suburbs. In 1922, a collection of 19th-century European paintings was transferred to the Hermitage from the Academy of Arts . In turn, in 1927 about 500 important paintings were transferred to the Central Museum of old Western art in Moscow at the insistence of the Soviet authorities. In 1928,
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6762-1000: 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
6923-413: 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
7084-610: The Great Courtyard of the Winter Palace has been open to the public. In 2003, the Hermitage loaned 142 pieces to the University of Michigan Museum of Art for an exhibition titled The Romanovs Collect: European Art from the Hermitage . In December 2004, the museum discovered another looted work of art: Venus Disarming Mars by Rubens was once in the collection of the Rheinsberg Palace near Berlin, and
7245-517: The Greek revival style in the early 1850s, using painted polished stucco and columns of natural marble and granite . The Room of the Great Vase in the western wing features the 2.57 m (8.4 ft) high Kolyvan Vase, weighing 19 t (42,000 lb), made of jasper in 1843 and installed before the walls were erected. While the western wing was designed for exhibitions, the rooms on
7406-570: The Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of
7567-536: The Nicholas Hall of the Winter Palace and lasted a year. Of the paintings, all but one originated from private rather than state German collections, including 56 paintings from the Otto Krebs collection, as well as the collection of Bernhard Koehler and paintings previously belonging to Otto Gerstenberg and his daughter Margarete Scharf, including the world-famous Place de la Concorde by Degas , In
7728-567: The Red Army in Germany in 1945 were held in the Hermitage. But only in October 1994 did the Hermitage officially announce that it had secretly been holding a major trove of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings from German private collections. The exhibition "Hidden Treasures Revealed", where 74 of the paintings were displayed for the first time, was opened on 30 March 1995 in
7889-690: The Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as
8050-653: The Thuringian city of Treffurt . Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of
8211-752: The Ukrainian project "Ostannya Addresa", in order to avoid the status of a " foreign agent ". The first Russian cities to install memorial signs became Moscow and Saint Petersburg. On 7 February 2020, the thousandth memorial sign was installed in Russia: in the city of Gorokhovets, Vladimir Oblast . By that moment the plaques were also installed in the following cities: Yekaterinburg , Rostov-on-Don , Perm , Taganrog , Barnaul , Krasnoyarsk , etc. The first memorial signs of “Last Address” project were installed in Moscow on Human Rights Day, 10 December 2014. Some of
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#17327827752248372-528: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On
8533-721: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to
8694-542: The 13th to the 20th centuries. Since 1940, the Egyptian collection, dating back to 1852 and including the former Castiglione Collection, has occupied a large hall on the ground floor in the eastern part of the Winter Palace. The collection of classical antiquities occupies most of the ground floor of the Old and New Hermitage buildings. The interiors of the ground floor were designed by German architect Leo von Klenze in
8855-410: The 16th century and French fine art of the 15th–18th centuries, including paintings by Poussin , Lorrain , Watteau . The collections of French decorative and applied art from the 17th–18th centuries and British applied and fine art from the 16th–19th century, including Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds , are on display in nearby rooms facing the courtyard . The richly decorated interiors of
9016-528: The 16th–18th centuries, including Veronese , Giambattista Pittoni , Tintoretto , Velázquez and Murillo . The Knights' Hall, a large room in the eastern part of the New Hermitage originally designed in the Greek revival style for the display of coins, now hosts a collection of Western European arms and armour from the 15th–17th centuries, part of the Hermitage Arsenal collection. The Gallery of
9177-519: 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
9338-471: 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
9499-684: The French in Kassel during the war. The Hermitage collection of Rembrandts was then considered the largest in the world. Also among Alexander's purchases from Josephine's estate were the first four sculptures by the neoclassical Italian sculptor Antonio Canova to enter the Hermitage collection. Between 1840 and 1843, Vasily Stasov redesigned the interiors of the Southern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage. In 1838, Nicholas I commissioned
9660-455: The Garden by Renoir , and White House at Night by Van Gogh . Some of the paintings are now on permanent display in several small rooms in the northeastern corner of the Winter Palace on the first floor. In 1993, the Russian government gave the eastern wing of the nearby General Staff Building across the Palace Square to the Hermitage and the new exhibition rooms in 1999. Since 2003,
9821-409: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,
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#17327827752249982-407: The Hermitage and later donated them to form a nucleus of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (see also Soviet sale of Hermitage paintings ). With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, before the Siege of Leningrad started, two trains with a considerable part of the collections were evacuated to Sverdlovsk . Two bombs and a number of shells hit the museum buildings during
10143-412: The Hermitage foundation decided to create a further branch in Italy with the launch of a national bid. Several northern Italian cities expressed interest such as Verona, Mantua, Ferrara and Turin. In 2007, the honor was awarded to the city of Ferrara which proposed its Castle Estense as the base. Since then, the new institution called Ermitage Italia started a research and scientific collaboration with
10304-491: The Hermitage. From 1787 to 1792, Quarenghi designed and built a wing along the Winter Canal with the Raphael Loggias to replicate the loggia in the Apostolic Palace in Rome designed by Donato Bramante and frescoed by Raphael. Catherine's collection of at least 4,000 paintings came to rival the older and more prestigious museums of Western Europe. Catherine took great pride in her collection and actively participated in extensive competitive art gathering and collecting that
10465-433: The History of Ancient Painting adjoins the Knights' Hall and also flanks the skylight rooms. It was designed by Leo von Klenze in the Greek revival style as a prelude to the museum and features neoclassical marble sculptures by Antonio Canova and his followers. In the middle, the gallery opens to the main staircase of the New Hermitage, which served as the entrance to the museum before the October Revolution of 1917, but
10626-468: The Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ( знак ударения ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress . For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this
10787-406: The Last Address plaque the only place where the memory of the deceased is preserved. Thus, the memorial sign is a tribute to the right of a person not to be forgotten. According to the idea of the project initiators, perpetuating the memory of the victims of political repressions of the past contributes to recognizing the value of life, human rights and freedoms in the present, as well as to preventing
10948-425: The Last Address preserves the memory of each individual. According to the idea of the authors of the project, the individual character of the memorial signs humanizes the "dry" and "faceless" statistics about the millions of victims of repression, the abstract nature of which does not arouse emotions. The "argument about history" and "geopolitics" turns into a "conversation about a person", a concrete fate, whose tragedy
11109-411: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of
11270-500: The Oriental art (from China, India, Mongolia, Tibet, Central Asia, Byzantium and Near East). Catherine the Great started her art collection in 1764 by purchasing paintings from Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky . He assembled the collection for Frederick II of Prussia , who ultimately refused to purchase it. Thus, Gotzkowsky provided 225 or 317 paintings (conflicting accounts list both numbers), mainly Flemish and Dutch, as well as others, including 90 not precisely identified, to
11431-505: The Pavilion Hall in the Northern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage from 1851 to 1858. In 1861, the Hermitage purchased from the Papal government part of the Giampietro Campana collection, which consisted mostly classical antiquities. These included over 500 vases, 200 bronzes and a number of marble statues. The Hermitage acquired Madonna Litta , which was then attributed to Leonardo, in 1865, and Raphael's Connestabile Madonna in 1870. In 1884 in Paris, Alexander III of Russia acquired
11592-807: 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
11753-486: The Russian crown. The collection consisted of Rembrandt (13 paintings), Rubens (11 paintings), Jacob Jordaens (7 paintings), Anthony van Dyck (5 paintings), Paolo Veronese (5 paintings), Frans Hals (3 paintings, including Portrait of a Young Man with a Glove ), Raphael (2 paintings), Holbein (2 paintings), Titian (1 painting), Jan Steen ( The Idlers ), Hendrik Goltzius , Dirck van Baburen , Hendrick van Balen and Gerrit van Honthorst . Perhaps some of
11914-458: 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
12075-845: The Small Hermitage from the Northern to Southern Pavilion house an exhibition of Western European decorative and applied art from the 12th to 15th century and the fine art of the Low Countries from the 15th and 16th centuries. The rooms on the first floor of the Old Hermitage were designed by Andrei Stakenschneider in revival styles in between 1851 and 1860, although the design survives only in some of them. They feature works of Italian Renaissance artists, including Giorgione , Titian , Veronese , as well as Benois Madonna and Madonna Litta attributed to Leonardo da Vinci or his school. The Italian Renaissance galleries continues in
12236-540: The Small Hermitage, the museum now also includes the "Old Hermitage" (also called "Large Hermitage"), the "New Hermitage", the " Hermitage Theatre ", and the " Winter Palace ", the former main residence of the Russian tsars. In recent years, the Hermitage has expanded to the General Staff Building on the Palace Square facing the Winter Palace, and the Menshikov Palace . The Western European Art collection includes European paintings, sculpture, and applied art from
12397-471: The Small Hermitage. During the time of Catherine, the Hermitage was not a public museum and few people were allowed to view its holdings. Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe also rebuilt rooms in the second story of the south-east corner block that was originally built for Elizabeth and later occupied by Peter III . The largest room in this particular apartment was the Audience Chamber (also called
12558-405: 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
12719-551: The Soviet government ordered the Hermitage to compile a list of valuable works of art for export. From 1930 to 1934, over two thousand works of art from the Hermitage collection were clandestinely sold at auctions abroad or directly to foreign officials and businesspeople. The sold items included Raphael 's Alba Madonna , Titian 's Venus with a Mirror , and Jan van Eyck 's Annunciation , among other world known masterpieces by Botticelli , Rembrandt , Van Dyck , and others. In 1931 Andrew W. Mellon acquired 21 works of art from
12880-613: The Throne Hall) which consisted of 227 square meters. The Hermitage buildings served as a home and workplace for nearly a thousand people, including the Imperial family. In addition to this, they also served as an extravagant showplace for all kinds of Russian relics and displays of wealth prior to the art collections. Many events were held in these buildings including masquerades for the nobility, grand receptions and ceremonies for state and government officials. The "Hermitage complex"
13041-467: 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
13202-529: The Winter Palace, features jewellery from the Pontic steppes , Caucasus and Asia, in particular Scythian and Sarmatian gold. Pavilion Hall, designed by Andrei Stackenschneider in 1858, occupies the first floor of the Northern Pavilion in the Small Hermitage. It features the 18th-century golden Peacock Clock by James Cox and a collection of mosaics . Two galleries spanning the west side of
13363-548: The Winter Palace, the former Imperial residence, were proclaimed state museums and eventually merged. The range of the Hermitage's exhibits was further expanded when private art collections from several palaces of the Russian Tsars and numerous private mansions were nationalized and redistributed among major Soviet state museums. Particularly notable was the influx of old masters from the Catherine Palace ,
13524-482: The arts. Using the title Catherine the Minerva, she created new institutions of literature and culture and also participated in many projects of her own, mostly play writing. The representation of Catherine alongside Minerva would come to be a tradition of enlightened patronage in Russia. In 1815, Alexander I of Russia purchased 38 pictures from the heirs of Joséphine de Beauharnais , most of which had been looted by
13685-604: The best collections offered for sale by the heirs of prominent collectors. In 1769, she purchased Brühl 's collection, consisting of over 600 paintings and a vast number of prints and drawings, in Saxony . Three years later, she bought Crozat 's collection of paintings in France with the assistance of Denis Diderot . Next, in 1779, she acquired the collection of 198 paintings that once belonged to Robert Walpole in London followed by
13846-403: 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
14007-495: The building. In her lifetime, Catherine acquired 4,000 paintings from the old masters, 38,000 books, 10,000 engraved gems, 10,000 drawings, 16,000 coins and medals, and a natural history collection filling two galleries, so in 1771 she commissioned Yury Felten to build another major extension. The neoclassical building was completed in 1787 and has come to be known as the Large Hermitage or Old Hermitage. Catherine also gave
14168-417: The circumstances of the murder. The "last address" of the victim of repressions is also checked (whether the house has been preserved, whether the numbering of the street houses has not changed) and her biography is studied. After that, the project participants start the procedure of approving the installation of the memorial sign. When placing a sign on a residential building, the consent of its tenants-owners
14329-652: The collection of Alexander Basilewski , featuring European medieval and Renaissance artifacts. In 1885, the Arsenal collection of arms and armour, founded by Alexander I of Russia , was transferred from the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo to the Hermitage. In 1914, Leonardo's Benois Madonna was added to the collection. Immediately after the Revolution of 1917, the Imperial Hermitage and
14490-417: The consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate
14651-572: 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
14812-418: The creation of the memorial promotes a deep personal connection between the person now living and the person who died as a result of Soviet repression. In this way, the individual becomes more involved in the memorial project, and his or her responsibility and awareness of participation in it increases. Another important aspect of the project the Last Address is that it is not implemented as a state program, but
14973-768: The day of political prisoners, signs of the Last address appeared on the facades of four houses in Prague . On 2 August 2018, the Ultima adresa project was launched in Moldova : the first two plates of the “Last Address” appeared in Chișinău . On 5 October 2018, the Georgian project " უკანასკნელი მისამართი. საქართველო ", "Last Address, Georgia" officially started. On 30 August 2019, the first commemorative plaque appeared in Germany, in
15134-450: The east of the Winter Palace which he completed in 1766. Later it became the Southern Pavilion of the Small Hermitage. From 1767 to 1769, French architect Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe built the Northern Pavilion on the Neva embankment. Between 1767 and 1775, the extensions were connected by galleries, where Catherine put her collections. The entire neoclassical building is now known as
15295-415: The eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since July 1992, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky . Of the six buildings in the main museum complex, five—namely the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage, New Hermitage, and Hermitage Theatre —are all open to
15456-478: The eastern wing of the New Hermitage with paintings, sculpture, majolica and tapestry from Italy of the 15th–16th centuries, including Conestabile Madonna and Madonna with Beardless St. Joseph by Raphael . The first floor of New Hermitage contains three large interior spaces in the center of the museum complex with red walls and lit from above by skylights. These are adorned with 19th-century Russian lapidary works and feature Italian and Spanish canvases of
15617-554: The end of 2006 several of the stolen items had been recovered. In March 2020, Apple released a continuous 5 hour and 19 minute one shot film recorded entirely on an iPhone 11 Pro detailing many rooms of the museum which highlighted not only the artwork, but also the architecture, and live movement pieces interspersed throughout. In recent years, the Hermitage launched several dependencies abroad and domestically. The Hermitage dependency in Kazan ( Tatarstan , Russia), opened in 2005. It
15778-413: 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,
15939-673: The fall of 2017, a memorial sign of orientalist Richard Fasmer was unveiled on the facade of the Hermitage Museum ( Palace Embankment , 32), in the winter of 2018, the sign of accountant Alvina Peterson appeared on the wall of the chamber stage of the Bolshoi Theater (Nikolskaya Street, 17), and in the summer of 2019, the Novgorod Kremlin honored the memory of art historian Boris Shevyakov. Placing Last Address plaques at specific places of terror serves to maintain
16100-470: The famous Gonzaga Cameo, Italic art from the 9th to second century BC, Roman marble and bronze sculpture and applied art from the first century BC to fourth century AD, including copies of Classical and Hellenistic Greek sculptures. One of the highlights of the collection is the Tauride Venus , which, according to latest research, is an original Hellenistic Greek sculpture rather than a Roman copy as it
16261-521: The fate of specific victims who used to live at this address, about the importance of preserving the memory. If the owner refuses, the memorial sign is not placed on the building, as respect for rights and lack of coercion is a significant principle of the project. As the researchers note, such discussions themselves contribute to the formation of memory of political repression. This project is important for such things not to happen again. Those who know nothing about repressions will ask questions when they see
16422-456: 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
16583-732: The first floor of the Winter Palace on its eastern, northern and western sides are part of the Russian culture collection and host the exhibitions of Russian art from the 11th-19th centuries. French Neoclassical , Impressionist and post-Impressionist art, including works by Renoir , Monet , Van Gogh and Gauguin , are displayed on the fourth floor of the Eastern Wing of the General Staff Building. Also displayed are paintings by Camille Pissarro (Boulevard Montmartre, Paris), Paul Cézanne (Mount Sainte-Victoire), Alfred Sisley , Henri Morel , and Degas . Modern art
16744-519: The former Soviet Union and Russian Empire . Among them is a renowned collection of the art and culture of nomadic tribes of the Altai from Pazyryk and Bashadar sites, including the world's oldest surviving knotted-pile carpet and a well-preserved wooden chariot , both from the 4th–3rd centuries BC. The Caucasian exhibition includes a collection of Urartu artifacts from Armenia and Western Armenia . Many of them were excavated at Teishebaini under
16905-692: 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
17066-480: 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
17227-493: The ground floor in the eastern wing of the New Hermitage, now also hosting exhibitions, were originally intended for libraries . The collection of classical antiquities features Greek artifacts from the third millennium – fifth century BC, ancient Greek pottery , items from the Greek cities of the North Pontic Greek colonies , Hellenistic sculpture and jewellery, including engraved gems and cameos , such as
17388-436: The house of the genetic scientist Nikolai Vavilov . Historian Irine Karatsuba describes the project through an inversion of the pseudo-Stalinist aphorism "no person - no problem": the memorial sign, pointing to the literal "absence" of the victim of political repression, actualizes and problematizes the disappearance of the person. The authors of the project note that the graves of many repressed people are still unknown, making
17549-538: The inevitability of the fall of Soviet power,” “praising the old Tsarist regime and proving unprofitability of kolkhozes”; as a result, he was sentenced to capital punishment in the form of execution by a firing squad. The first country outside Russia became Ukraine, where a separate project " Остання адреса – Україна " based on Russian "Last address" started working. On 5 May 2017 the first three commemorative plaques were installed on three houses in Kyiv. On 7 June 2017, on
17710-421: The initiators of the memorial position it as "people's". Such isolation is explained by activists by the fact that state programs are often of a formal nature, not affecting the living feelings of people, while for the formation of humanistic values in society it is society that must take an active part in the reflection of its tragic past. In order to coordinate the work of the project, the "Last Address" Foundation
17871-405: The last address) are taken from the investigation file of the repressed. If the house is not preserved, the sign is placed next to this place, and the first line on it may read "At this place was the house where lived (a)...", "Next to this house was the house where lived (a)...", "Opposite was the house where lived (a)..." and so on. In cases where the victim's profession is unknown, this information
18032-406: The memorial (and even attempts to destroy it). Researchers note that not only the memory "imprinted in stone" (materially, in the form of tablets) is important for society, but also "living" memory, memory as a process and people's attitudes, formed, among other things, through various events and discussions around the monument, which in this understanding acts only as a "means" of memory formation. It
18193-402: The memory of the victims. In the framework of the project, an important moment for memorializing a person is his or her official legal rehabilitation , which demonstrates the illegality of the state's persecution of him or her. The Last Address is a decentralized "networked" memorial consisting of many commemorative plaques installed in many cities around the world. They are created according to
18354-466: The most famous and notable artworks that were a part of Catherine's original purchase from Gotzkowsky were Danaë , painted by Rembrandt in 1636; Descent from the Cross , painted by Rembrandt in 1624; and Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Glove , painted by Frans Hals in 1650. These paintings remain in the Hermitage collection today. In 1764, Catherine commissioned Yury Felten to build an extension on
18515-409: The most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on
18676-400: The most ordinary people, be it a barmaid, a conductor, a historian, an engineer or an artist. The authors of the project draw attention to the fact that unlike memorial plaques to famous people who became victims of the gosterror, the plaques of the Last Address directly indicate the reason for their disappearance from their homes. An example of this duality of memory can be seen, for example, on
18837-467: The murdered person, or a resident of the house that became the last address of the victim, or any other person who considered such a step important for him or her. The main source of information on victims of political repression for the project is the multi-million name database collected by Memorial since the 1990s. The Last Address is the de facto physical embodiment of this virtual list. Inspired by similar German memorial Stolpersteine , this project
18998-545: The name of the Hermitage to her private theatre , built nearby between 1783 and 1787 by the Italian architect Giacomo Quarenghi . In London in 1787, Catherine acquired the collection of sculpture that belonged to Lyde Browne , mostly Ancient Roman marbles. Catherine used them to adorn the Catherine Palace and park in Tsarskoye Selo , but later they became the core of the Classical Antiquities collection of
19159-532: The neoclassical German architect Leo von Klenze to design a building for the public museum. Space for the museum was made next to the Small Hermitage by the demolition of the Shepelev Palace and royal stables. The construction was overseen by the Russian architects Vasily Stasov and Nikolai Yefimov from 1842 to 1851 and incorporated Quarenghi's wing with the Raphael Loggias. The New Hermitage
19320-524: 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
19481-515: 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
19642-461: 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,
19803-446: 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
19964-453: 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
20125-471: The photo missing from the card and symbolizes the emptiness, loss, formed after the death of a person. The plaques are installed so that they are clearly visible from the sidewalk. If several commemorative signs are placed on a house, project designers develop a special artistic solution for their arrangement on the wall. Plaques are installed not only on residential houses, but also on buildings that now belong to public or private legal entities. For example, in
20286-459: 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
20447-418: 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
20608-521: The principle of "One Name, One Life, One Sign". This means that each such plaque is made individually and is dedicated to one specific person who died as a result of state terror. The memorial sign is placed on the wall of the house that became the last lifetime address of the victim of political repression: the person was taken from it and never returned. The sign is a small, palm-sized or postcard-sized rectangular plaque, measuring 11 cm × 19 cm (4.3 by 7.5 inches), made of thick steel sheet. Its standard design
20769-592: The project is the nonprofit entity Last Address Foundation for the Commemoration of Victims of Political Repression ( Russian : Фонд увековечения памяти жертв политических репрессий «Последний Адрес» ) founded by the Memorial Society and a number of individual persons through voluntary contributions from private citizens and organizations. On 15 June 2018 "The last address" received a German Karl Wilhelm Fricke award . Its monetary part will be sent to
20930-416: The project. At the time of 2020, about 2,000 applications for the placement of memorial signs were registered. At the same time, the initiators emphasize that the ultimate goal of the project is not the installation of millions of plaques "on every house" (which seems unattainable), but the actualization, comprehension of the memory of political repression, which is achieved through the creation and existence of
21091-479: 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
21252-472: 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 ,
21413-470: The public. The entrance ticket for foreign tourists costs more than the fee paid by citizens of Russia and Belarus. However, entrance is free of charge the third Thursday of every month for all visitors, and free daily for students and children. The museum is closed on Mondays. The entrance for individual visitors is located in the Winter Palace, accessible from the Courtyard. A hermitage is the dwelling of
21574-576: The repetition of the tragedies of state terror and totalitarianism in the future. The geography of the memorial spans dozens of cities in several countries around the world. As of summer 2023, more than 1,500 plaques have been installed in more than 60 locations. Memorial plaques have also been placed in the Czech Republic, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Germany and France. Activists from other countries, such as Poland , Latvia , Romania , Belarus , and Armenia have also expressed their desire to join
21735-491: 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
21896-460: The siege. The museum opened an exhibition in November 1944. In October 1945 the evacuated collections were brought back, and in November 1945 the museum reopened. In 1948, 316 works of Impressionist , post-Impressionist , and modern art from the collection of the Museum of New Western Art in Moscow, originating mostly from the nationalized collections of Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov before
22057-538: The signs were made in response to applications of the residents of houses where repressed people had lived. The next batch of signs was installed in February–March 2015. By January 2015, over 500 applications for the installation of memorial sign had been submitted. Since 2016, the installation of memorial signs is being performed usually 2 times per month. The first 12 memorial signs on the houses of Saint Petersburg were installed on 21–22 March 2015; “Last Address”
22218-566: The signs. Those who had witnessed them will remember them one more time. Alexander Brodsky The project is the initiative of Moscow and St. Petersburg historians, civic and civil rights activists, journalists, architects, designers and writers. The project initiative had originated with journalist and publisher Sergey Parkhomenko , who saw in Germany the stones of the European Stolpersteine project to commemorate
22379-420: The supervision of Boris Piotrovsky , former director of the Hermitage Museum. Four small rooms on the ground floor, enclosed in the middle of the New Hermitage between the room displaying Classical Antiquities, comprise the first treasure gallery, featuring western jewellery from the 4th millennium BC to the early 20th century AD. The second treasure gallery, located on the ground floor in the southwest corner of
22540-679: 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
22701-509: The symbol of Minerva was frequently used and favored by Catherine to represent her patronage of the arts, a cameo of Catherine as Minerva is also displayed here. This particular cameo was created for her by her daughter-in-law, the Grand Duchess Maria Fyodorovna . This is only a small representation of Catherine's vast collection of many antique and contemporary engraved gems and cameos. The collection soon overgrew
22862-459: 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
23023-786: 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
23184-511: 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
23345-437: The victim, or a resident of the house that became the last address of the victim, or any other person who considers this step important for him or her. Such a person submits an application through the Last Address website. After all organizational issues have been resolved by the project team, he or she also makes a targeted donation for the production and installation of the memorial sign. The principle of personal participation in
23506-554: The victims of Nazism . Within the scope of that project, over 50,000 memorial stones were set up in Germany and other countries of Europe. The organizers of "Last Address" intend to install a comparable number of plaques across Russia. The project is based on the law “On the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repressions” adopted in 1991. The law treats the period of political repressions in Russia and USSR as starting on 25 October (7 November) 1917. The official representative of
23667-471: The war, were transferred to the Hermitage, including works by Matisse and Picasso . On 15 June 1985, a man later judged insane attacked Rembrandt's painting Danaë , displayed in the museum. He threw sulfuric acid on the canvas and cut it twice with a knife. The restoration of the painting had been accomplished by Hermitage conservationists by 1997, and Danaë is now on display behind armoured glass. In 1991, it became known that some paintings looted by
23828-414: Was a creation of Catherine's that allowed all kinds of festivities to take place in the palace, the theatre and even the museum of the Hermitage. This helped solidify the Hermitage as not only a dwelling place for the Imperial family, but also as an important symbol and memorial to the imperial Russian state. Today, the palace and the museum are one and the same. In Catherine's day, the Winter Palace served as
23989-581: Was apparently looted by Soviet troops from the Königsberg Castle in East Prussia in 1945. At the time, Mikhail Piotrovsky said the painting would be cleaned and displayed. The museum announced in July 2006 that 221 minor items, including jewelry, Orthodox icons, silverware and richly enameled objects, had been stolen. The value of the stolen items was estimated to be approximately $ 543,000. By
24150-669: Was created with support from President of the Republic of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev and is a subdivision of the Kazan Kremlin State Historical and Architectural Museum-Park. The museum is situated in the Kazan Kremlin in an edifice previously occupied by the Junker School built in the beginning of the 19th century. Following the prior experiences in London, Las Vegas , Amsterdam and Kazan,
24311-536: Was developed by architect Alexander Brodsky . Despite its minimalism , the sign is recognizable and expressive: it is a quiet, laconic sad statement. In the right part of the plaque in a simple "chopped" uppercase font, the text is handwritten in several lines, using stamps: "Here lived (-a) / <paternity name> / <family name> / <profession> / born (-as) in <year> / arrested (-a) <date> / shot (-a) <date> / rehabilitated (-a) in <year>". The exact dates of arrest and shooting (as well as
24472-733: Was established. Its operating costs are covered by private donations, as well as grants from organizations such as the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center, the Memory Foundation, the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation, and Bosco di Cilieg. After the application is submitted, the project participants check it. First, information about the victim of repression is correlated with the database. Then the project participants conduct additional research in state archives to clarify information about
24633-405: 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
24794-421: 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
24955-556: Was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky . The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day . It has been open to the public since 1852. The Art Newspaper ranked the museum 10th in their list of the most visited art museums , with 2,812,913 visitors in 2022. Its collections, of which only
25116-538: Was launched in Perm in February 2014. The first four plaques were installed on 10 August 2015. The project founder Serguei Parkhomenko came from Moscow to Perm; in an interview to Zvezda magazine he talked about the ways to launch an initiative group, what the cases of the repressed were telling us and whether it was necessary or advisable to install signs commemorating the organizers of repressions. The first village with
25277-463: Was launched in 2014. As of 2023, more than one and a half thousand memorial signs have been installed on houses in dozens of cities. Since 2017, the project went beyond Russia and became international: its signs began to be placed in the Czech Republic , Ukraine , Moldova , Georgia , Germany and France . At the same time, the authors and researchers note that the goal of the "Last Address"
25438-615: Was opened to the public on 5 February 1852. In the same year the Egyptian Collection of the Hermitage Museum emerged and was particularly enriched by items given by the Duke of Leuchtenberg , Nicholas I's son-in-law. Meanwhile, from 1851 to 1860, the interiors of the Old Hermitage were redesigned by Andrei Stackensneider to accommodate the State Assembly, Cabinet of Ministers and state apartments. Stakenschneider created
25599-459: Was prevalent in European royal court culture. Through her art collection she gained European acknowledgment and acceptance and portrayed Russia as an enlightened society. Catherine went on to invest much of her identity in being a patron of the arts. She was particularly fond of the Roman deity Minerva, whose characteristics according to classical tradition are military prowess, wisdom, and patronage of
25760-402: 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
25921-620: Was thought before. There are, however, only a few pieces of authentic Classical Greek sculpture and sepulchral monuments. On the ground floor in the western wing of the Winter Palace the collections of prehistoric artifacts and the culture and art of the Caucasus are located, as well as the second treasure gallery. The prehistoric artifacts date from the Paleolithic to the Iron Age and were excavated all over Russia and other parts of
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