The Moskva Pool (Moscow Pool) was, for a time, the world's largest open air swimming pool .
157-568: It was built in Moscow in 1958 on the foundation of the abandoned Palace of the Soviets , to the designs of Moscow architect Dmitry Chechulin . Construction of the Palace of Soviets had begun in 1937 and was abandoned in 1941 when steel from the foundation of the building was used for war materials during World War II . The construction did not resume after the war's end, and the empty foundation of
314-674: 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
471-519: 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
628-430: A bathhouse with a sauna. The design of the outdoor swimming pool included landscaping and beautification of the surrounding area. The water reservoir was surrounded by an 11-metre-wide beach with an embankment of sea gravel. There were five shallow children's pools, benches and trees growing there. Next to the beach, there were pavilions with cashiers, a cloakroom and a buffet, which could accommodate two thousand people at
785-759: A blend of various identifiable prototypes. Iofan himself said the two main inspirations behind his design were the Pergamon Altar and the Victor Emmanuel II Monument which was, in turn, inspired by the Pergamon Altar. The choice was natural for Iofan, because he had often seen the Vittoriano while living in Rome, and because he studied under one of its creators, Manfredo Manfredi . The other identifiable and undisputed design cue
942-478: A clear winner but cautiously praised an entry by Heinrich Ludwig , an enormous pentagonal enlargement of Lenin's Mausoleum devoid of any stylistic cues. On 18 July 1931, the USDS announced a public, open, international competition, with entries due by 20 October (later extended to 1 December 1931). In September, the USDS amended the terms and explained the design of the palace would not be awarded to
1099-404: A country devastated by wars and revolutions . In post-revolution Russian language the word palace ( Russian : дворец ) denoted a multi-role public building that shared entertainment and administrative functions; as time went by, the administrative side predominated. The word was never applied to residences of political leaders: their private affairs remained a closely guarded secret. During
1256-439: A fixed fee. Armando Brasini agreed to submit a proposal at no cost. From a professional standpoint the best proposal came from Le Corbusier. The Soviet press praised his innovative, logical and convenient floor plan as late as 1940, but the jury felt the high-rise exoskeleton supporting the saddle roof was inappropriate for downtown Moscow. Most of the sixteen drafts selected by the jury were modernist in inspiration, but
1413-643: A flat and straight boulevard. The Pushkin Museum building, which partly obstructed the course of the Alley, would be moved north to Gogolevsky Boulevard . Most of it would be absorbed into the palace plaza. The plaza would extend far south-west along the axis of the Alley, and north-west into present-day Arbat District . The Zamoskvorechye island west of the House on the Embankment would disappear, making way for
1570-433: A height of 30 metres (98 ft). The "even smaller" Constitution Hall and Reception Hall in the stylobate measured 70 by 36 metres (230 by 118 ft) and 122 by 20 metres (400 by 66 ft). Floors in the office tower were planned to have a usable height of 10 to 12 metres (33 to 39 ft), for even more session halls of various government branches. The exact number of floors was not disclosed. Enormous as it was,
1727-473: A hostile, subversive influence of the capitalist West that was promptly revealed and suppressed by the party. The reform was effected through the party decrees of the 1930s, starting with the USDS review of the international competition. In the late 1950s and 1960s modernism became the official style of the Soviet state, and recent history was rewritten again to exonerate the party. Soviet theorists argued that
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#17327720817011884-484: 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
2041-441: A lengthy tour of European and American cities. Their main objectives were the reevaluation of the 1934 design against best American practices , and the research and purchase of modern construction technologies. Moran & Proctor , a leading foundation engineering firm, became the first American company to be hired for the project and would assist the USDS throughout the 1930s. More visits and more contracts, facilitated through
2198-588: 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
2355-528: A list of necessary changes. Stalin expressly ruled out the alternative designs by Zholtovsky ("...smacks of Noah's ark"), and particularly by Shchusev ("the same cathedral, but without a cross. Possibly, Shchusev hopes to add a cross at a later day"). The fourth and final competition between five selected teams was held in August 1932 – February 1933. This time, all proposals were very similar in composition, although still different stylistically. On 10 May 1933
2512-622: 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
2669-530: A negative reaction of the Moscow public. The expression "First there was a church [the Cathedral], then rubbish [the unbuilt Palace of Soviets], and now shame [the pool]" ( Russian : Сперва был храм, потом — хлам, а теперь — срам. , romanized : Sperva byl khram, potom – khlam, a teper' – sram. ) became commonplace. In April 1988, a grassroots movement to restore the Cathedral of Christ
2826-443: A plausible explanation until the 2000s publications by Harald Bodenschatz [ de ] and Christiane Post. In the late 1990s Dmitry Chmelnizki advanced a different explanation. The competitions were set up by Stalin personally as a complex political provocation. In the opening, self-educational phase, Stalin familiarized himself with all active architectural schools and selected the general direction that would soon become
2983-588: A proxy for announcing decisions made by Stalin and the Politburo . The subordinate Construction Directorate (USDS) was the actual project management team of Mikhail Kryukov [ ru ] (chair), Boris Iofan (chief architect), Hermann Krasin , Arthur Loleyt [ ru ] and Ivan Mashkov . The USDS appointed and supervised the Technical Council, that included dozens of experienced architects, artists and engineers. Boris Iofan,
3140-526: 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
3297-518: A similar theory. Opponents like Sergey Kuznetsov argue the existing evidence of Stalin's personal involvement is too scarce to make far-reaching conclusions. There are very few transcripts and quotations reproduced in the Soviet media. The protocols of the Politburo and the journals of Stalin's office in the Kremlin contain very few records related to the palace. Chmelnizki, on the contrary, rates
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#17327720817013454-507: A simple two-tone color scheme. The designers selected greyish blue Ukrainian labradorite for the basement and pale grey granite from the Daut River [ ru ] valley for the rest of the structure. The palace's internal transport infrastructure was designed assuming 50,000 visitors daily. The routes to the grand hall and to the office tower were physically separated; the former relied primarily on stairs and escalators ,
3611-402: A single architect or a group or firm. The USS claimed no single group could overcome the project's unprecedented challenges; it requires a joint effort of "all living creative forces of the Soviet society". The message foreshadowed the imminent nationalization of the formerly independent professional community, but no one, even the party insiders like Iofan, Alabyan or Shchusev , could predict
3768-407: A single tall, compact, and monumental structure, avoiding any resemblance to church architecture. The main hall, seating 15,000 people, had to face the Kremlin. The Ginzburg and Ladovsky teams remained true to modernist ideas. Karo Alabyan and company produced an impressive and novel modernist design—"a ship of state" with three lean "funnels" flanking the river. The other architects followed
3925-517: A smooth transition from the granite-clad tower to the all-metal statue. The pose and the proportions of the statue also changed. This revised design was presented and discussed at a conference of the Union of Soviet architects in July 1939. A book by Nikolay Atarov [ ru ] describing the design and the construction process in plain language was published one year later. The total height of
4082-525: A tight visual ensemble with Iofan's House on the Embankment. Most of the Technical Council disagreed. On 30 May, they recommended the sites in Zaryadye or Bolotnaya Square as second-best alternatives; the cathedral site was ranked least acceptable. Tired of insubordination , Voroshilov invited the stubborn professionals to a meeting with Stalin. On 2 June 1931, Stalin, Molotov, Kaganovich , Voroshilov, Meyer and eight selected architects from
4239-410: A time. They sold and lent out swimming gear. During the winter, the exits from the pool were connected to the pavilions by special corridors. The depth of the pool was originally four metres, but due to the increasing number of drownings, the bottom was covered with concrete, raising it to a height of 1.85 m. The swimming pool was included in the civil defence system of Moscow and a decontamination point
4396-642: A wide reflective pool . The tip of the island would become a base to the memorial of the Chelyuskin and the projected Pantheon of the Aviators. After World War II, the Ivan Zholtovsky workshop proposed an even larger, and certainly unreal, redevelopment plan for the central squares. Nothing ever came from these fantasies except for the construction of the New Arbat Avenue in
4553-539: 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,
4710-481: 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
4867-401: 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
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5024-557: 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
5181-488: 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
5338-624: 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
5495-573: 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
5652-564: 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
5809-402: 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
5966-569: 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
6123-585: 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
6280-628: Is the Art Deco "ribbed style" of exterior walls, which had already been used by other Soviet architects. The dome of the grand hall was inspired by the Centennial Hall in Breslau . Less obvious, speculative sources range from Fritz Lang 's Metropolis to Athanasius Kircher 's Turris Babel . During the competition period, the state dissolved formerly independent architectural movements and de facto nationalized all architects under
6437-518: Is the stressed word in a sentence, for example Ты́ съел печенье? ( Tý syel pechenye? – "Was it you who ate the cookie?") – Ты съе́л печенье? ( Ty syél pechenye? – "Did you eat the cookie?) – Ты съел пече́нье? ( Ty syel pechénye? "Was it the cookie you ate?"). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners. The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex, with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to four consecutive sounds. Using
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6594-464: 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
6751-470: 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
6908-476: The Amtorg network , would follow in subsequent years. From a purely architectural perspective, the most important experience was gained at the site of the partially completed Rockefeller Center . Iofan used the stepped-slab motive of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in later projects, and directly inspired careful realignment of the palace's staggered layers. These and other subtle exterior changes proceeded throughout
7065-1000: 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
7222-538: The Brezhnev era. It was certainly not unique to Hamilton's entry: similar ribbed facades, a staple of American Art Deco , were also used by Alexey Dushkin , Iosif Langbard , Dmitry Chechulin and Iofan himself. European left-wing architects could not accept the fact and appealed directly to Stalin. The leaders of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM) realized very well that
7379-413: 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
7536-598: The Moskva River . The draft disposed with former Constructivist novelty The shape of the main hall changed from a parabolic dome to a stack of flat cylinders and, according to Katherine Zubovich, acquired "more italianate form". Le Corbusier despised it as " childish megalomania ". Ivan Zholtovsky bizarrely combined Italian Renaissance with the Pharos lighthouse and the Colosseum . Hamilton's Art Deco draft
7693-584: 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
7850-721: 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
8007-565: 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 the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which
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#17327720817018164-428: The uniqueness of the future palace: it should be radically different from any existing public building. It sent a clear message that the entries would be judged not by professionals but by politicians, who do not and would not align with any existing professional faction. By the end of June, the USDS had collected 15 entries representing all active movements, as well as Iofan and his brother Dmitry . Most, including
8321-424: The "freed proletarian" was merely 18 meter (60') tall. Structural engineering issues had not been addressed at all. The Politburo was not completely impressed with the result, and instructed Iofan to install a giant statue of Lenin, 50 to 75 meter (160 to 250') tall, on top of the palace. The official narrative published in 1940 presented this proposal as Stalin's personal initiative. Molotov hesitated, arguing that
8478-425: The 1920s at an unprecedented and so far unexplained pace. By 1931 he had a proven record of completing high-profile projects, including the enormous House on the Embankment with its cinema hall [ ru ] —the largest modern auditorium in Moscow. Stalin certainly endorsed Iofan's appointment, probably on Yenukidze's recommendation. Iofan was difficult to work with soon forcing Kryukov to resign. In
8635-510: The 1920s, modest "palaces of labor" or "palaces of culture" were actually built. The coveted national palace had to be exceptionally large, impressive and technologically advanced to stand above the crowd. The idea of placing a giant statue of Lenin on top of the national administrative center (originally, the Comintern building) goes back to a 1924 proposal by Viktor Balikhin , then a graduate student at Vkhutemas : " Arc lamps will flood
8792-473: The 1930s usually appealed to the "improved welfare of the masses". Constructivism was presented as a temporary, low-cost ersatz architecture. Once the nation had overcome the bitter poverty of the 1920s, "the people" (i.e. the communist state) disposed with stopgap solutions and rightfully embraced "quality" architecture. After World War II the "welfare of the masses" fell to an all-time low and Soviet critics adjusted accordingly. They painted modernism as
8949-433: The 1960s. A geological survey of the site began in 1933 and continued into 1934. Drilling to depths of 110 metres (360 ft) confirmed the feasibility of construction. The uppermost limestone sill was too thin to carry the main building's weight, but the second one, 20 metres (66 ft) below the water level, was sufficiently solid. Groundwater in the area contained very little sulfates and chlorides , and
9106-519: 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
9263-441: The 416-metre (1,365 ft) tall palace would have become the world's tallest structure, with an internal volume surpassing the combined volumes of the six tallest American skyscrapers. This was especially important to the Soviet state for propaganda purposes . Boris Iofan 's victory in a series of four architectural competitions held between 1931 and 1933 signaled a sharp turn in Soviet architecture, from radical modernism to
9420-471: 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
9577-532: 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,
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#17327720817019734-590: 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
9891-482: The Iofans, leaned toward modernist architecture. Iofan had considered various alternatives, and ruled out compact centric floor plans in favor of a sprawling group of buildings aligned along the north–south axis of the cathedral site. The two halls were placed at the ends of the axis, with spacious inner courtyards and a lean, tall tower in between. The draft did not impress contemporary observers. The USDS did not name
10048-535: The Kremlin and Red Square. There were no large or otherwise valuable buildings to raze; demolition of existing low-rise buildings and the relocation of their inhabitants required little time or effort. Left-wing architectural factions immediately disputed this economically sound choice. In April–May the Technical Council reviewed various alternatives and confirmed the selection of the Okhotny Ryad site. Molotov and Voroshilov thought differently. On 25 May,
10205-526: 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
10362-515: The Palace of the Soviets in 1958 was made into an open-air swimming pool which existed from 1958 until 1994. The water was heated in order to extend the pool season into colder weather. In 1995, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was restored in its place, the original cathedral having been demolished in 1931 by the Soviet regime to make way for the Palace of the Soviets. The Moskva Pool was an artificial circular hydraulic structure. The diameter of
10519-480: The Politburo co-opted Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Helfreich . Iofan remained the chief architect, but he now had to deal with two experienced and influential co-authors. The theatrical, dramatic visionary architecture that emerged from this collaboration was approved and publicized to great pomp in February 1934 despite a complete lack of technical and economic estimates. The official narrative presented
10676-413: The Politburo announced the final decision in favor of Iofan. The winning design closely followed Iofan's earlier proposal — a compact, ziggurat -like stack of three cylinders perched on a massive stylobate and flanked with colonnades, ramps and grand staircases. Total height of the core structure reached 220 meters (720'), but there was no office tower and no statue of Lenin yet. The proposed statue of
10833-457: The Politburo, advised by Molotov and Voroshilov, voted in favor of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour site. Hannes Meyer and the ASNOVA supported this option. Iofan had secretly studied all the alternatives beforehand and was quite comfortable with the cathedral site. It required extensive demolition and presented so far unknown technical challenges, but it was the largest site and it formed
10990-807: 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
11147-458: 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
11304-579: The Saviour emerged in Moscow. In September 1989, a decision was taken to restore it at its former site, and a year later a foundation stone was laid next to the swimming pool. In 1991, the Moskva swimming pool ceased operations and was abandoned for three years, though in fact swimmers were being admitted in the summer of 1993; on January 7, 1995, the foundation of the cathedral was laid. 55°44′40″N 37°36′20″E / 55.74444°N 37.60556°E / 55.74444; 37.60556 Palace of
11461-489: The Shchuko-Helfreich proposal or be removed from the project. He complied, and the design evolved along the middle road between the two extremes. Placement of a giant statue on top of an already enormous structure caused a disproportional, nonlinear increase in building height. To make the statue visible from the ground, architects had to mount it on a tall but narrow, tapering pedestal—a "skyscraper" standing on
11618-405: 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
11775-634: The Soviets The Palace of the Soviets ( Russian : Дворец Советов , romanized : Dvorets Sovetov ) was a project to construct a political convention center in Moscow on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Saviour . The main function of the palace was to house sessions of the Supreme Soviet in its 130-metre (430 ft) wide and 100-metre (330 ft) tall grand hall seating over 20,000 people. If built,
11932-605: The Soviets") metro station, placed just outside the watertight perimeter, was built in less than a year in 1934–1935. 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
12089-480: The Technical Council convened in the Kremlin, where Stalin presented his arguments in favor of the cathedral site. Kaganovich feared the destruction of an Orthodox shrine would spark an antisemitic backlash and suggested a site in Sparrow Hills , but Stalin's viewpoint prevailed. Historians disagree over the interpretation of this meeting. According to Kuznetsov, the decision had not yet been finalized, and
12246-467: 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
12403-460: The architects could still propose other sites. According to Sona Hoisington, the decision was final, but its main objective was not the palace but the destruction of the cathedral, with the project being a purely political statement, made without prior feasibility studies and completely disregarding the economics. According to Chmelnizki, the decision was final; it was the first step in the development of Stalinist architecture . On 5 June 1931,
12560-487: The architects of the 1930s abandoned constructivism voluntarily and then forged the new monumental style on their own. The "excesses" of Stalinist architecture were the architects' fault only. The party, which carefully advised the professionals, bears no responsibility for what was actually built. A toned-down version of the same narrative persisted until the 2000s, notably in the works of Selim Khan-Magomedov [ ru ] . Western authors, likewise, did not produce
12717-539: The autumn of 1931 the chair of the USDS passed to party apparatchik Vasily Mikhailov [ ru ] , the architect's former superior at the House on the Embankment project. Kryukov, Mikhailov, Rykov, Yenukidze and Iofan's colleagues at the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee would be killed in Stalin's purges, but the unsinkable architect would survive unharmed and retain his office, despite
12874-524: The balance between the statue and the building. Shchuko and Helfreich thought otherwise, and did not hesitate to perch the giant statue on top of the building, extending its height by 100 metres (330 ft). Initially, their base structure was a slab-sided rectangular block rather than Iofan's stack of cylinders. Iofan objected, but Shchuko appealed directly to the Construction Council. The politicians summoned Iofan and forced him to accept
13031-403: 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
13188-407: The change appeared to be a natural development within the professional community. The overwhelming majority of Soviet, Russian and foreign authors, with the notable exception of Antonia Cunliffe, agree the competitions represented a deliberate rejection of modernism in favor of monumental historicism . The connection has always been public but subject to different interpretations. Soviet authors of
13345-434: The choice of the top three winners surprised and embarrassed everyone involved. The Politburo made the decision secretly, and the Construction Council announced it publicly five days later on 28 February 1931. The three prizes were awarded to Boris Iofan, Ivan Zholtovsky and the virtually unknown British-American autodidact Hector Hamilton . Iofan presented a revised version of his earlier proposal, re-aligned along
13502-554: The competition was a matter of politics, rather than art, and that Stalin had the final say. They were willing to cooperate with the dictator and felt betrayed when it turned out he had his own plans. Their message amounted to an ultimatum , threatening to retract all support to the Soviet Union. It is not known if Stalin ever read these letters, but the withdrawal of unwanted "allies" certainly suited him well. The third, closed, competition among 12 invited teams of architects
13659-406: The concrete slab. Columns of the second segment were placed at a 22° angle, forming a tent over the grand hall up to the 140-metre (460 ft) mark. Above it, a traditional vertical frame would be used. Two massive steel rings, similar to the hoops that hold the staves of a barrel together would hold the tent. These rings, weighing an estimated 28 thousand tons, were the largest, the heaviest and
13816-711: The congress. This, according to the official Soviet narrative, was the beginning of the story of the Palace of the Soviets. Before the congress, in January–May 1919, Petrograd had held an architectural competition for the "Palace of Labor"; in October 1922 the Moscow Architectural Society [ ru ] launched a competition for a different "Palace of Labor", endorsed by the same Sergei Kirov. Both projects were large enough to seat any conceivable convention, and none of them could materialize in
13973-399: The construction of three new thermal power stations . Internal cleaning and waste disposal systems contained twelve central vacuum cleaning stations of 750 kW each, and thirty industrial garbage disposal units with a combined capacity of seven tons/day. Heavy air conditioning equipment would have been located below ground level, the conditioned air would be delivered to each seat in
14130-439: The core. The core's concrete foundations rested on limestone bedrock 20 metres (66 ft) below the level of the Moskva River . The much lighter, 90-metre (300 ft) tall stylobate could safely rest on the uppermost limestone sill , 3–5 metres (9.8–16.4 ft) below the ground. The stylobate design used a traditional steel frame; on the contrary, the frame of the core was radically unconventional. Instead of running
14287-572: 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
14444-469: The existing city; there was nothing distinctly "Soviet", either. The state demanded "supermonumentality", and found it in Iofan's Art Deco proposal, which was then replicated in lesser projects across the country. The decree of 10 May 1933 expressly warned Iofan that the politicians felt free to "help" him by attaching other architects to the design process. The threat materialized on 4 June, when
14601-402: The face of Lenin would not be seen from the main plaza, but had to bow to Stalin and Voroshilov. According to Andrey Barkhin, the true purpose of the fourth stage was to narrow down stylistic choice to one of two alternatives: either following an existing, historical model, or creating something completely new. Iofan managed to suit both sides: although his proposal looked novel, it was in fact
14758-413: 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,
14915-456: 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
15072-590: The floors of the lobbies, for cleaning the soles of the visitors' shoes. Moscow's planners viewed the palace as the hub of the Ilyich Alley , a new southwest-to-northeast axis aligned along present-day Komsomolsky Prospect , Volkhonka Street , Manezhnaya Square and Sakharov Prospect . The concept developed by the Vesnin brothers and Ivan Leonidov in the 1920s was incorporated in the 1935 urban reconstruction plan [ ru ] in its basic form, and
15229-717: 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 is the most spoken native language in Europe ,
15386-631: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to
15543-480: 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
15700-449: The grand hall via a network of ducts running under each row of seats. The placement of air intakes required further research on the distribution of pollutants in the air; the designers knew that the intakes should have been raised to at least 40 metres (130 ft), but the exact height was not yet known. Apparently dust prevention and cleaning the dust were paramount concerns. The designers even provided for vibrating brushes, installed in
15857-450: The huge evaporation area of the water surface was the cause of corrosion of the neighbouring buildings. The water came into the pool from the city water supply and was heated in a boiler room. It was passed through filters and chlorinated before being supplied. The facility had a laboratory that checked the quality of the water. The water area of the swimming pool was divided into sections for free swimming and exercise, and its main purpose
16014-457: The incriminating connections. Iofan prepared the terms of architectural competitions and controlled all the USDS's paperwork, giving him an advantage over any potential competitor. This obvious conflict of interest provoked speculation that the competitions were rigged in Iofan's favor, or that he was the chosen architect from the very start and the competitions were merely a ruse. In the 2010s archival research confirmed this hypothesis, which
16171-408: The instructions and presented compact, monumental but uninspiring proposals. Iofan settled for a tall stack of four cylinders, wrapped in rows of white "ribbed style" pylons. The jury declined to appoint a winner and announced yet another round of competition. Stalin, on the contrary, privately notified Kaganovich, Molotov and Voroshilov that "Iofan's plan is unconditionally the best..." and compiled
16328-486: The latter on elevators . There were to be 130 passenger elevators carrying 25 people each, 27 service elevators and 20 elevators with firefighting equipment. Since no elevator could travel the whole height of the building, visitors to the top floors had to make two or three transfers, sometimes via escalators or stairs. Electrical consumption of the palace was specified at 90 MW peak, and 90 million kWh per annum. Fault-tolerant, redundant electricity supply required
16485-441: The monumental historicism that would come to characterize Stalinist architecture . The definitive design by Iofan, Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Helfreich was conceived in 1933–1934 and took its final shape in 1937. The staggered stack of ribbed cylinders crowned with a 100-metre (330 ft) statue of Vladimir Lenin blended Art Deco and Neoclassical influences with contemporary American skyscraper technology . Work on
16642-494: The most expensive elements of the frame. The statue of Lenin, weighing around 6,000 tons, was to be built around its own steel frame, and clad in monel sheeting with an estimated lifetime of two thousand years. External walls followed the American pattern of hollow-body brick infill and granite exterior cladding. According to the official narrative, Stalin instructed the designers to avoid unnecessary visual clutter and use
16799-414: 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 the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as
16956-425: The new policy. Architects kept on producing and publishing modernist drafts until at least 1935, but such proposals had no chance to be built. Rudolf Wolters , who came to Novosibirsk in the summer of 1932, reported that by the time of his arrival the provincial party executives had already received orders from Moscow to build "in classical style" only. On the national level, no such orders were formally published;
17113-524: 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
17270-412: The official style. Then, he artfully degraded the social status and self-esteem of the architectural profession—which was a prerequisite to nationalization. Finally, he destroyed the ties that united the architects into firms, groups and movements. In the end, the former diverse and independent professional community was reduced to a homogenous mass of obedient individuals. Anna Selivanova later published
17427-515: 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
17584-461: 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,
17741-547: The outcome as a joint effort of the three peers, but the reality was more complicated. In the second half of 1933, Iofan's team in Moscow and the Shchuko-Helfreich team in Leningrad operated separately. Iofan did not want to alter his 1933 design radically or to increase its already substantial height. Contrary to the instructions received in May, he preferred placing the statue of Lenin on a standalone pedestal or tower, to maintain
17898-462: The outcome was sealed by the Politburo . In December the stripped hulk of the cathedral was publicly blown up . The Okhotny Ryad site was also demolished for the construction of the STO Building [ ru ] (1932–1935) and Arkady Mordvinov 's residential block on Tverskaya Street (1937–1939). The idea of destroying cultural heritage was not a novelty to the Soviet regime, as in
18055-721: The outcome. Another covert purpose of the competition—suppression of undesirable architecture in a manner similar to the " Degenerate art " campaign in Germany—would be revealed by Alexey Tolstoy (another party insider) later, just before the announcement of the winners. Tolstoy clearly warned the architects that Gothic architecture , " American skyscraperism " and " corbusianism " had become distinctly unwanted. The expert jury chaired by Molotov received 112 brief proposals and 160 proper drafts, including 24 by foreign architects. Dignitaries like Le Corbusier , Walter Gropius or Erich Mendelsohn were preselected and invited by Iofan for
18212-460: The palace's grand hall was much smaller than Albert Speer 's Volkshalle , designed to hold 180 thousand people, but the Russian palace surpassed the Volkshalle in total height. The completed palace would have consisted of two parts resting on two independent foundations: the circular core with the grand hall, the office tower and the statue of Lenin; and a rectangular stylobate adjacent to
18369-408: The palace, including the statue, was set at 416 metres (1,365 ft), taller than the recently completed Empire State Building . Being a much wider structure, the palace was estimated to weigh over 1.5 million tons, and have a gross volume of over 7.5 million cubic meters (9.8 million cu. yd.). Its net internal volume would have surpassed the combined volume of six largest American skyscrapers of
18526-446: 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
18683-453: 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
18840-411: The period between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Soviet Union fell from 29,584 to less than 500 (1.7%) as a result of demolitions or conversions into secular buildings. In April 1931, the chosen architects and architectural groups received terms of the first, preliminary competition. The brief, prepared by Iofan and signed by Kryukov, reiterated the monumentality and emphasizing
18997-637: The period. The palace would require 350.000 tons of structural steel , six times more than the Empire State Building and almost twice as much as the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge ). The grand hall seating 21 thousand people had to have an inner diameter of 130 metres (430 ft), an outer diameter of 160 metres (520 ft), a height of 100 metres (330 ft) meters and internal volume of 970,000 cubic meters (1.3 million cu. yd.). The "small" hall had 5,000 seats and
19154-470: The pit down to the bedrock, the workers removed 160,000 cubic metres (5,700,000 cu ft) of rock and 620,000 cubic metres (22,000,000 cu ft) of soft soil. The core's concrete foundations, consisting of two concentric rings with an external diameter of 160 metres (520 ft), were completed in January 1938. In a related but independent development, the nearby Dvorets Sovetov ("Palace of
19311-459: 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
19468-418: 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
19625-541: The project. The alternative Palace of the Soviets in Sparrow Hills , which was proposed after Stalin's death, did not proceed beyond the architectural competition stage. On 30 December 1922 the First All-Union Congress of Soviets announced the creation of the Soviet Union . On the same day Sergei Kirov proposed construction of a new national convention center, which was duly approved by
19782-479: 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
19939-472: 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 ,
20096-491: 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
20253-434: The rest of the decade, along with the subsidiary interior design and urban planning tasks, and the creation of factories and workshops. The definitive exterior design took its final shape by 1937. The number of stacked cylinders was reduced from five to four with progressively decreasing, rather than uniform, spacings between the pylons. The stainless steel moldings attached to the pylons widened progressively with height for
20410-472: The same Politburo evidence as substantial. Kuznetsov says mundane issues like deliveries of firewood mattered more than architectural follies. Apart from a few publicized meetings, there is no evidence that Stalin ever invited architects to the Kremlin. The only architect who had spoken to Stalin regularly was his personal contractor Miron Merzhanov , who remained modernist throughout the 1930s. Yet another hypothesis suggested by Sona Hoisington in 2003 views
20567-414: The scenes. According to Kuznetsov, Iofan initiated and managed the competitions for his own benefit, to harvest free ideas from his unsuspecting colleagues. He never agreed to be a temporary placeholder and did not intend to give up his lead to anyone. In March 1931, the Construction Council chose a compact site in the former Okhotny Ryad Street market, just a few hundred meters (yards) north-west from
20724-497: The second in command in the USDS, immediately assumed the title and role of chief architect. A recent repatriant from Italy and a long-time student of Italian architect Armando Brasini , Iofan was a maverick within the Soviet architectural community and had no obligations to any group. He was also a trusted insider of the party elite, with particularly strong ties to Alexei Rykov and Avel Yenukidze . His career with Soviet state clients began in 1922 in Rome and proceeded through
20881-498: The site commenced in 1933; the foundation was completed in January 1939. The German invasion in June 1941 ended the project. Engineers and workers were diverted to defense projects or pressed into the army; the installed structural steel was disassembled in 1942 for fortifications and bridges. After World War II , Joseph Stalin lost interest in the palace. Iofan produced several revised, scaled-down designs but failed to reanimate
21038-410: The statue and the design by Sergey Merkurov remained controversial throughout the 1930s and were harshly criticized in public by Boris Korolyov , Nikolai Tomsky , Martiros Saryan and other involved artists. A salient function of the palace project was the transfer of modern technology to the backward Soviet industry. At the end of 1934, Iofan, Shchuko, Helfreikh and their associates departed on
21195-472: The stylistic change as a direct and unintended consequence of the destruction of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Demolition of the largest building in Moscow left a void in the city fabric that required, at the very least, an equally monumental replacement. The modernist drafts received in 1931 could not make up for the loss. They lacked "a center of gravity, a sense of hierarchy", and any connection to
21352-626: 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
21509-459: 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
21666-520: The top of the grand hall. The increased height of the pedestal made the statue appear smaller, and the cycle repeated itself. According to the official narrative, experiments with scale models led to the conclusion that the appropriate height of the statue is exactly 100 metres (330 ft). Lenin's head alone had to be almost as large as the Pillar Hall of the House of the Unions . The location of
21823-786: 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
21980-469: The umbrella of state-owned design companies and the Union of Soviet Architects [ ru ] . By the end of 1932, modernist architecture in general, and its constructivist, rationalist [ ru ] and formalist movements in particular, came to a halt, giving way to the emerging Stalinist architecture. Modernist projects laid down earlier were gradually completed and often "improved" to suit
22137-420: The unchecked ambitions of both groups soon caused a multifold increase in size, scope and cost. In the summer of 1931, the already bloated project was renamed the "Palace of the Soviets". In February 1931, the government set up a three-tier project management structure. The Construction Council was a decorative political committee chaired by Kliment Voroshilov and later Vyacheslav Molotov ; it served as
22294-511: 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
22451-550: The villages, towns, parks and squares, calling everyone to honor Lenin even at night ...". The proposal was later popularized by Balikhin's rationalist movement, the ASNOVA , but gained little recognition. The decision to build the "House of Congresses" ( Russian : Дом съездов ) was made at the end of 1930 or in early 1931, and announced in February 1931. The influences behind the decision cannot be reliably ascertained. Dmitrij Chmelnizki [ de ] claims Stalin
22608-442: The water surface was 130 m, the area was 13 thousand square meters, the volume of water was 25 thousand cubic meters. The capacity of the swimming pool was up to 20 thousand visitors per day and up to three million per year. About 24 million people visited the swimming pool during its first ten years of operation. The swimming pool operated year-round, receiving visitors even in temperatures as low as -20 °C. The water temperature
22765-413: The whole vertical height of the building, the palace's load-bearing columns had to wrap around the grand hall. Thus, the frame was split into three distinct segments. The lower segment, 60 metres (200 ft) tall, comprised 32 pairs of vertical columns placed around the grand hall and connected to the foundation slab via massive riveted "shoes". These "shoes" rested on massive steel plates implanted into
22922-435: Was "mass recreational swimming and recreation". The facility housed therapeutic and recreational swimming groups for children and adults, synchronised swimming and water polo groups. A sports sector with a separate entrance was equipped for training. The sports swimming pool was divided into eight lanes and in the centre, there were a 10 m high diving platform with the option of jumping from different heights. The complex also had
23079-437: Was afterwards supported by Iofan's biographers Maria Kostyuk, Dmitrij Chmelnizki and Sergey Kuznetsov. As early as 6 February 1931, Iofan devised a three-step, nine-month consultation schedule with a predetermined outcome. The plan was soon implemented in a series of architectural competitions, where Iofan acted as primus inter pares (first among equals) in public and the éminence grise (powerful decision maker) behind
23236-484: Was almost always still, thus concrete degradation was not a significant concern. In the second half of 1934, the builders drilled hundreds of boreholes around the perimeter of the site and pumped hot bitumen into the ground. This formed a watertight vertical curtain extending from the surface to the load-bearing sill, which allowed safe excavation below the river level. Blasting and excavation commenced in January 1935, and continued for more than three years. To clear
23393-405: 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
23550-421: 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
23707-523: Was held in March–July 1932. In addition to the nine prize-winners of the open competition, at Mikhailov's request the USDS also invited notable constructivists and rationalists. Two future co-authors of the palace, Vladimir Shchuko and Vladimir Helfreich were invited as a reward for their work on the Lenin Library . The USDS required all architects to abandon a sprawling, squat design in favor of
23864-404: Was regulated by an artificial heating system and did not drop below 18° and 22° in summer and winter respectively. During the cold seasons, the water was heated to 32–34 °C. For safety reasons, use of the pool at temperatures below -20° was not allowed, as the dense, thick steam over the surface of the water made it difficult to observe swimmers and the work of lifeguards. There is a theory that
24021-468: Was subsequently reexamined in numerous drafts and proposals. Real construction practice often contradicted the plans: new buildings erected in the center of Moscow often blocked or narrowed the planned avenue. In 1940, the city approved a revised plan. All buildings between the palace and the Kremlin, including the Moscow Manege , had to be demolished. The Alexander Garden would be leveled into
24178-530: Was the project's sole initiator; Sergey Kuznetsov counters that the idea was pitched by Alexei Rykov . The "House of Congresses" was, chronologically, the first of the three megaprojects launched in Moscow in 1931, months before the Moscow Canal and the Moscow Metro . Its initial scope was modest; the architects and the politicians believed that building could be topped out in 1933. However,
24335-402: 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
24492-463: Was to operate there during emergencies. The huge area of evaporation generated by the huge water surface of the pool was the cause of corrosion of neighboring buildings. In particular, employees of the Pushkin Museum complained that the location of the outdoor pool negatively affects the safety of the exhibits. The construction of the pool on a site of the destroyed cultural heritage caused
24649-432: Was uninspiring but the most cohesive of the three. Hamilton, who had never been to Moscow, deliberately avoided any references to both modernist and historical styles. The symmetrical array of staggered rectangular shapes and semicylinders, facing the river, was adorned only with uniform rows of white vertical pylons . The "ribbed style" of Hamilton's drafts is strangely reminiscent of almost all Soviet public buildings of
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