181-566: Russian military deception , sometimes known as maskirovka ( Russian : маскировка , lit. 'masking, disguise'), is a military doctrine developed from the start of the 20th century. The doctrine covers a broad range of measures for military deception , from camouflage to denial and deception . Deceptive measures include concealment, imitation with decoys and dummies , manoeuvres intended to deceive, denial, and disinformation . The 1944 Soviet Military Encyclopedia refers to "means of securing combat operations and
362-674: 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
543-519: 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
724-601: A "vicious and reactionary fascist clique". Field Marshal Mannerheim and Väinö Tanner , the leader of the Finnish Social Democratic Party , were targeted for particular scorn. When Stalin gained absolute power through the Great Purge of 1938, the Soviets changed their foreign policy toward Finland and began to pursue the reconquest of the provinces of Tsarist Russia that had been lost during
905-678: A Soviet plan to annex Finland. Rather, the objective was to gain Finnish territory and to reinforce Soviet influence in the region. Another American historian Stephen Kotkin also shares the position that the Soviet Union did not aim for annexation. He points out the different treatment Finland was given, compared to the Baltics: unlike the pacts of mutual assistance that the Baltics were pressured into, resulting in their total Sovietization,
1086-620: A celebratory piece of music from Dmitri Shostakovich , Suite on Finnish Themes , intended to be performed as the marching bands of the Red Army paraded through Helsinki. The Soviets were confident that the Western powers would not come to Finland's aid. Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to the UK, said: "Who would help? The Swedes? The British? The Americans? There's no way in hell. There will be
1267-465: A commander's personal gift of cunning and guile, part of his military skill, whereas deception is practised by the whole organization and does not carry the sense of personal trickiness; nor need the Russian use of deception be thought of as "evil". Indeed, Michael Handel reminds readers, in the preface to the military analyst David Glantz 's book, of Sun Tzu 's claim in The Art of War that all warfare
1448-397: 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) Winter War [REDACTED] Finland [REDACTED] Soviet Union Asia-Pacific Mediterranean and Middle East Other campaigns Coups Finland Iceland Norway The Winter War
1629-690: A fuss in the press, moral support, moaning and whining. But troops, aircraft, cannons, and machine guns – no." Hungarian historian István Ravasz wrote that the Soviet Central Committee had set out in 1939 that the former borders of the Tsarist Empire were to be restored, including Finland. American political scientist Dan Reiter stated that the Soviets "sought to impose a regime change " and thus "achieve absolute victory". He quoted Molotov, who had commented in November 1939 on
1810-558: A hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of the consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate
1991-484: A language that "belongs to the European cultural space". The financing of Russian-language content by the state will cease, which the concept says create a "unified information space". However, one inevitable consequence would be the closure of public media broadcasts in Russian on LTV and Latvian Radio, as well as the closure of LSM's Russian-language service. In Lithuania , Russian has no official or legal status, but
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#17327655996392172-455: A large-scale attack." This was two months before the German 6th Army capitulated. Hitler's own self-deception played into this, as he was unwilling to believe that the Red Army had sufficient reserves of armour and men. Further, the many ineffective Red Army attacks to the north of Stalingrad had unintentionally given the impression that it was unable to launch any substantial attack, let alone
2353-588: 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
2534-513: A look at other Second World War operations, that the Soviet military deception in Bagration was unsophisticated, but "clever and effective". The Soviets succeeded in distorting OKH's intelligence picture, given that German intelligence had to rely mainly on radio intercept, aerial photography and agents left behind in the territory they had once held. Stavka deceived OKH by playing to their three sources of information; Stavka systematically denied
2715-510: A loss of prestige after having made them public. However, the Soviet offer was eventually rejected with respect to the opinion of the public and Parliament. At the meeting on 9 November, Paasikivi announced to the attending Stalin and Molotov the Finnish refusal to accept even their reduced demands. The Soviets were visibly surprised. Finnish Foreign Minister Vaino Tanner later wrote that "the eyes of our opposite numbers opened wide". Stalin had asked "You don't even offer Ino?" This would become
2896-404: A maximalist demand, ready to be traded down smaller. The Soviets instead had stressed the minimalist nature of their demands, and were incredulous over Finnish reluctance to agree. Finally, there was also Stalin's unwillingness or inability to accept that any territorial concessions on the part of Finland would have only been possible by a 4/5th majority in the Finnish parliament. He had mocked such
3077-548: A meeting with military historians that the Soviets had launched the Winter War to "correct mistakes" made in determining the border with Finland after 1917. Opinion on the scale of the initial Soviet invasion decision is divided. The puppet Finnish communist government and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact's secret protocol is used as proof that the Soviet Union had intended to conquer all of Finland. On 1 December 1939,
3258-563: A minor presence in national politics and never had more than 14 seats of the 200 in the Finnish Parliament . By the late 1930s, the export-oriented Finnish economy was growing and the nation's extreme political movements had diminished. After Soviet involvement in the Finnish Civil War in 1918, no formal peace treaty was signed. In 1918 and 1919, Finnish volunteers conducted two unsuccessful military incursions across
3439-622: 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
3620-673: A narrow-front assault right on the Karelian isthmus. Additionally, Shaposhnikov argued for a fuller build-up, extensive fire support and logistical preparations, a rational order of battle and the deployment of the army's best units. Zhdanov's military commander, Kirill Meretskov , reported, "The terrain of coming operations is split by lakes, rivers, swamps, and is almost entirely covered by forests.... The proper use of our forces will be difficult". These doubts were not reflected in Meretskov's troop deployments, and he publicly announced that
3801-422: A number of meanings. The Russian term маскировка , maskirovka literally means masking . An early military meaning was camouflage , soon extended to battlefield masking using smoke and other methods of screening. From there it came to have the broader meaning of military deception, widening to include denial and deception . The practice of military deception predates Russia. The Art of War , written in
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#17327655996393982-553: A possible German invasion through Finland. He stated that "the strongest argument" against a Soviet intention of full conquest is that it did not happen in either 1939 or during the Continuation War in 1944 even though Stalin "could have done so with comparative ease". Bradley Lightbody wrote that the "entire Soviet aim had been to make the Soviet border more secure". In 2002, Russian historian A. Chubaryan stated that no documents had been found in Russian archives that support
4163-526: 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
4344-409: A rapid army-scale pincer movement. Careful attention was paid to security, with greatly reduced radio traffic. The Germans failed to detect the creation of five new tank armies. Troop movements were successfully concealed by moving the armies up only at night, and camouflaging them by day on the open, treeless steppes . Strategic deception included increasing military activity far away, near Moscow. At
4525-406: A reason. He claimed that Stalin had little hope for such a deal but would play for time for the ongoing mobilisation. He stated the objective as being to secure Finland from being used as a staging ground by means of regime change. Others argue against the idea of a complete Soviet conquest. American historian William R. Trotter asserted that Stalin's objective was to secure Leningrad's flank from
4706-431: A requirement, proposing that they count his and Molotov's votes, too. On 26 November 1939, an incident was reported near the Soviet village of Mainila , near the border with Finland. A Soviet border guard post had been shelled by an unknown party resulting, according to Soviet reports, in the deaths of four and injuries of nine border guards. Research conducted by several Finnish and Russian historians later concluded that
4887-561: A surprise attack from a regiment hidden in forest. The tactics of that battle are still cited in Russian cadet schools. The Russian Army had a deception school, active in 1904, disbanded in 1929. Meanwhile, military deception was developed as a military doctrine in the 1920s. The 1924 Soviet directive for higher commands stated that operational deception had to be "based upon the principles of activity, naturalness, diversity, and continuity and includes secrecy, imitation, demonstrative actions, and disinformation." The 1929 Field Regulations of
5068-539: 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,
5249-481: 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
5430-401: 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
5611-610: 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
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5792-673: 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 the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and
5973-419: Is based on deception; Handel suggests that deception is a normal and indeed necessary part of warfare. The goal of military deception is however surprise, vnezapnost , so the two are naturally studied together. However, the military analyst William Connor cautioned that in the Soviet sense, the doctrine covered much more than camouflage and deception. It had, he suggested, the connotation of active control of
6154-488: 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
6335-624: 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
6516-573: 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
6697-564: 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
6878-402: 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
7059-569: 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
7240-585: 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
7421-677: 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 the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and
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7602-518: 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
7783-466: Is the whole shebang—from guys in ski masks or uniforms with no insignia, to undercover activities, to hidden weapons transfers, to—well, starting a civil war but pretending that you've done nothing of the sort." In his comprehensive study, Soviet Military Deception in the Second World War , Glantz summarized the Russian doctrine as involving both active and passive deception and surprise. For
7964-470: 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
8145-1000: 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
8326-726: The Battle of Stalingrad , the Battle of Kursk , and Operation Bagration (in Belarus ): in these cases, surprise was achieved despite very large concentrations of force, both in attack and in defence. The doctrine has also been put into practice in peacetime, with denial and deception operations in events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis , the Prague Spring , and the annexation of Crimea . The Russian doctrine of military deception has evolved with time, and it encompasses
8507-660: The Battle of Stalingrad . In the historian Paul Adair's view, the successful November 1942 Soviet counter-attack at Stalingrad was the first instance of Stavka 's newly discovered confidence in large-scale deception. Proof of the success of the Soviet deception came, Adair notes, from the Chief of the German General Staff , General Kurt Zeitzler , who claimed early in November that "the Russians no longer have any reserves worth mentioning and are not capable of launching
8688-413: 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
8869-605: The Cuban Missile Crisis . According to CIA analyst James Hansen, the Soviet Army most likely used large-scale battlefield deception before the Cuban Missile Crisis "more frequently and with more consistent success than any other army". The soldiers involved in Anadyr were provided with winter clothing and informed they would be going to the east of the Soviet Union. On board ship, intelligence officers allowed
9050-678: The East Karelian uprising in Russia in 1921, and Finnish communists in the Soviet Union continued to prepare for revenge and staged a cross-border raid into Finland, the Pork Mutiny , in 1922. In 1932, the Soviet–Finnish Non-Aggression Pact was signed between both countries, and it was reaffirmed for ten years in 1934. Foreign trade in Finland was booming, but less than 1% of it was with the Soviet Union. In 1934,
9231-503: The Gulf of Finland along the seaward approaches to Leningrad, but Finland refused. Negotiations continued throughout 1938 without results. The Finnish reception of Soviet entreaties was decidedly cool, as the violent collectivisation and purges in Stalin's Soviet Union resulted in a poor opinion of the country. Most of the Finnish communist elite in the Soviet Union had been executed during
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#17327655996399412-487: The Hanko Peninsula for 30 years and to permit the Soviets to establish a military base there. In exchange, the Soviet Union would cede Repola and Porajärvi from Eastern Karelia (2120 square miles), an area twice the size as that of the territory demanded from Finland (1000 square miles). The Soviet offer divided the Finnish government: Gustaf Mannerheim had argued for an agreement, being pessimistic of
9593-686: The Karelian Isthmus , on Kollaa in Ladoga Karelia and on Raate Road in Kainuu , but there were also battles in Salla and Petsamo in Lapland . Following the initial setbacks, the Soviets reduced their strategic objectives and put an end to the puppet Finnish communist government in late January 1940, informing the Finnish government that they were willing to negotiate peace. After
9774-636: The Kingdom of Sweden . From 21 February 1808 to 17 September 1809, the Russian Empire waged the Finnish War against the Kingdom of Sweden, ostensibly to protect the Russian capital, Saint Petersburg . Eventually Russia conquered and annexed Finland, and converted it into an autonomous buffer state . The resulting Grand Duchy of Finland enjoyed wide autonomy within Russia until the end of
9955-666: The Leningrad Military District Kiril Meretskov initially ran the overall operation against the Finns. The command was passed on 9 December 1939 to the General Staff Supreme Command (later known as Stavka ), directly under Kliment Voroshilov (chairman), Nikolai Kuznetsov , Stalin and Boris Shaposhnikov. On 28 December, when Stalin asked for volunteers to take over military command, Semyon Timoshenko offered himself on
10136-584: The Red Army encouraged German Chancellor Adolf Hitler to believe that an attack on the Soviet Union would be successful and confirmed negative Western opinions of the Soviet military. After 15 months of Interim Peace , in June 1941, Germany commenced Operation Barbarossa , and the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviets began. Until the early 19th century, Finland was the eastern part of
10317-541: The Russian military intelligence (GRU) term for deception. Robert Pringle's 2006 Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Intelligence defined it as strategic deception. Scott Gerwehr's The Art of Darkness summarized it as deception and operational security . The historian Tom Cubbage commented that military deception was enormously successful for the Soviets, and whatever the United States might think, for
10498-399: The Soviet Union , recognised the new Finnish government just three weeks after the declaration. Finland achieved full sovereignty in May 1918 after a four-month civil war in which the conservative Whites defeated the socialist Reds with the help of the Imperial German Army , pro-German Jägers , and some Swedish troops, in addition to the expulsion of Bolshevik troops. Finland joined
10679-413: The Spanish Civil War veterans General Pavel Rychagov from the Soviet Air Forces ; the tank expert General Dmitry Pavlov and Stalin's favourite general, Marshal Grigory Kulik , the chief of artillery. The other faction was led by Khalkhin Gol veterans General Georgy Zhukov of the Red Army and General Grigory Kravchenko of the Soviet Air Forces. Under this divided command structure, the lessons of
10860-411: The Treaty of Tartu , confirming the old border between the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland and Imperial Russia proper as the new Finnish–Soviet border. Finland also received Petsamo Province , with its ice-free harbour on the Arctic Ocean. Despite the signing of the treaty, relations between the two countries remained strained. The Finnish government allowed volunteers to cross the border to support
11041-476: The Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration , media, education, science, culture, advertising, services . The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On
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#173276559963911222-507: 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
11403-407: The 19th century, when Russia began attempts to assimilate Finland as part of a general policy to strengthen the central government and unify the Empire by Russification . Those attempts were aborted because of Russia's internal strife, but they ruined Russia's relationship with Finland. In addition, support increased in Finland for self-determination movements. World War I led to the collapse of
11584-405: 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
11765-443: The 40,000 soldiers involved on deck only during the hours of darkness. The force, including missiles, reached Cuba before US intelligence became aware of it. Anadyr was planned from the start with elaborate denial and deception, ranging from the soldiers' ski boots and fleece-lined parkas to the name of the operation, a river and town in the chilly far east. Once America had become aware of Soviet intentions, deception continued in
11946-405: The 5th century BC and attributed to the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tsu , describes a strategy of deception : "I will force the enemy to take our strength for weakness, and our weakness for strength, and thus will turn his strength into weakness". Early in Russia's history, in the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380, Prince Dmitry Donskoy defeated the armies of the Mongol Golden Horde using
12127-412: The Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home
12308-427: The Finnish Civil War to the early 1930s was a politically unstable time in Finland because of the continued rivalry between the conservatives and the socialists. The Communist Party of Finland was declared illegal in 1931, and the nationalist Lapua Movement organised anticommunist violence, which culminated in a failed coup attempt in 1932. The successor of the Lapua Movement, the Patriotic People's Movement , had
12489-571: The Finnish campaign would take two weeks at most. Soviet soldiers had even been warned not to cross the border mistakenly into Sweden. Stalin's purges in the 1930s had devastated the officer corps of the Red Army; those purged included three of its five marshals, 220 of its 264 division or higher-level commanders and 36,761 officers of all ranks. Fewer than half of all the officers remained. They were commonly replaced by soldiers who were less competent but more loyal to their superiors. Unit commanders were overseen by political commissars , whose approval
12670-501: The Finnish government, and lead them to believe more concession may be forthcoming. Thus, Paasikivi's idea of reaching some sort of compromise by offering the Soviets the island of Jussarö and the fort of Ino were refused by Helsinki. On 31 October, Molotov publicly announced the Soviet demands to the Supreme Soviet . This surprised the Finns, and lent credibility to Soviet claims that their demands were minimalist and thus unalterable, as it would have been impossible to reduce them without
12851-415: The Finnish prospects in a war against the Soviet Union. But the Finnish government was reticent in reaching an agreement out of mistrust for Stalin: there was a fear of repeated follow-up demands, which would have put the future of Finnish sovereignty in danger. There were also those, such as Foreign Minister Eljas Erkko and Prime Minister Aimo Cajander , and the Finnish intelligence in general, who mistook
13032-593: The Finnish-Soviet border on the Karelian Isthmus be moved westward to a point only 30 km (19 mi) east of Viipuri ( Russian : Vyborg ) and that Finland destroy all existing fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus. Likewise, the delegation demanded the cession of islands in the Gulf of Finland as well as Rybachy Peninsula ( Finnish : Kalastajasaarento ). The Finns would also have to lease
13213-488: The Germans real intelligence on Red Army forces as they concentrated for the attack, and revealed other real and simulated forces in other places. However Stavka may have come to do this, it "played well to the Germans' mental attitude". Hitler's own reckless optimism and determination to hold on to captured territory at all costs encouraged him to believe the picture suggested by the Russians. Meanwhile, his advisors believed
13394-532: 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,
13575-643: The Great Purge, further tarnishing the Soviets' image in Finland. Meanwhile, Finland was attempting to negotiate a military co-operation plan with Sweden and hoping to jointly defend Åland. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939. It was publicly a non-aggression treaty , but it included a secret protocol in which Central and Eastern European countries were divided into spheres of influence . Finland fell into
13756-590: 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
13937-546: The Killian Report did not even mention adversarial denial and deception was an indication that American intelligence had not begun to study foreign D&D; it did not do so for another 20 years. Hansen considered it likely that with a properly-prepared "deception-aware analytic corps", America could have seen through Khrushchev's plan long before Maj. Heyser's revealing U-2 mission . In Hansen's view, it would take four decades before American intelligence fully understood
14118-670: The Kremlin had failed to reverse the Czechoslovak leader Alexander Dubček 's liberal reforms with threats, it decided to use force, masked by deception. The measures taken included transferring fuel and ammunition out of Czechoslovakia on a supposed logistics exercise; and confining most of their soldiers to barracks across the northern Warsaw Pact area. The Czechoslovak authorities thus did not suspect anything when two Aeroflot airliners made unscheduled landings at night, full of "fit young men". The men cleared customs and travelled to
14299-545: The Kursk salient, against the true figure of over 5100, and underestimated Soviet troop strength by a million. The historian Lloyd Clark observes that while the Wehrmacht was "feeding on intelligence scraps", the Soviets were "mastering maskirovka ". The result was that the Germans attacked Russian forces far stronger than those they were expecting. The commander of the Soviet 1st Tank Army , Mikhail Katukov , remarked that
14480-666: The League of Nations in 1920 and sought security guarantees, but Finland's primary goal was co-operation with the Scandinavian countries , mainly Sweden, and it focused on the exchange of information and on defence planning (the joint defence of Åland , for example), rather than on military exercises or on the stockpiling and the deployment of materiel . Nevertheless, Sweden carefully avoided committing itself to Finnish foreign policy. Finland's military policy included clandestine defence co-operation with Estonia . The period after
14661-533: The Luftwaffe attacked, the deception units returned fire and lit bottles of fuel to simulate fires. The deception had the immediate effect of increasing Luftwaffe air strikes against the railhead and false concentration area, while the two railheads actually in use were not attacked, and the Wehrmacht moved three Panzer divisions and one motorized infantry division of XL Panzer Corps to the Yukhnov area. Meanwhile,
14842-526: 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
15023-401: The Red Army stated that "surprise has a stunning effect on the enemy. For this reason all troop operations must be accomplished with the greatest concealment and speed." Concealment was to be attained by confusing the enemy with movements, camouflage and use of terrain, speed, use of night and fog, and secrecy. "Thus 'in Soviet military art during the 1920s the theory of operational maskirovka
15204-746: The Russian Empire during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War . On 15 November 1917, the Bolshevik Russian government declared that national minorities possessed the right of self-determination , including the right to secede and form a separate state, which gave Finland a window of opportunity. On 6 December 1917, the Senate of Finland declared the nation's independence . Soviet Russia , later
15385-807: 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
15566-458: 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
15747-430: The Russians should be emphasized again. We did not ... detect even one minefield or anti-tank area until ... the first tank was blown up by a mine or the first Russian anti-tank guns opened fire. The 1944 Operation Bagration in Belarus applied the strategic aims and objectives on a grand scale, to deceive the Germans about the scale and objectives of the offensive. The historian Paul Adair commented that "Once
15928-519: The Soviet Embassy in the centre of Prague. There they picked up weapons and returned to the airport, taking over the main buildings. They at once allowed further aircraft to land uniformed Spetsnaz and airborne troops , who took over key buildings across Prague before dawn. Reinforcements were then brought in by road, in complete radio silence , leaving NATO electronic warfare units "confused and frustrated". The 2014 annexation of Crimea
16109-569: The Soviet Union also joined the League of Nations. Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin regarded it a disappointment that the Soviet Union could not halt the Finnish Revolution. He thought that the pro-Finland movement in Karelia posed a direct threat to Leningrad and that the area and defences of Finland could be used to invade the Soviet Union or restrict fleet movements. Soviet propaganda then painted Finland's leadership as
16290-558: The Soviet Union formed a puppet government , named the Finnish Democratic Republic , to govern Finland after Soviet conquest. A declaration delivered via TASS stated: The People's Government in its present composition regards itself as a provisional government. Immediately upon arrival in Helsinki, capital of the country, it will be reorganised and its composition enlarged by the inclusion of representatives of
16471-479: The Soviet Union had intended to conquer all of Finland, and cite the establishment of the puppet Finnish Communist government and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 's secret protocols as evidence of this, while other sources argue against the idea of a full Soviet conquest. Finland repelled Soviet attacks for more than two months and inflicted substantial losses on the invaders in temperatures as low as −43 °C (−45 °F). The battles focused mainly on Taipale along
16652-464: The Soviet Union it was something to make use of both in war and in peacetime. An article in The Moscow Times explained: "But маскировка has a broader military meaning: strategic, operational, physical and tactical deception. Apparently in U.S. military terminology, this is called either CC&D (camouflage, concealment and deception) or more recently D&D (denial and deception). It
16833-505: The Soviet Union was mostly impassable except along a handful of unpaved roads . In prewar calculations, the Finnish Defence Command , which had established its wartime headquarters at Mikkeli , had estimated seven Soviet divisions on the Karelian Isthmus and no more than five along the whole border north of Lake Ladoga. In the estimation, the manpower ratio would have favoured the attacker by three to one. The true ratio
17014-485: The Soviet Union was running out of men and materiel , with much less industrial production than it in fact had. Thus they underestimated the forces ranged against them, a belief encouraged by continued deception operations. Pirnie points out that it did not have to succeed in every aspect to be successful. In Belarus, the German armies involved had a good idea of the locations and approximate timing of Operation Bagration, but
17195-464: The Soviet Union's "first real war on a massive scale using tanks, artillery, and aircraft" at Khalkin Gol went unheeded. As a result, Russian BT tanks were less successful during the Winter War, and it took the Soviet Union three months and over a million men to accomplish what Zhukov had managed at Khalkhin Gol in ten days (albeit in completely different circumstances). Soviet generals were impressed by
17376-648: The Soviet border, the Viena and Aunus expeditions , to annex areas in Karelia that according to the Greater Finland ideology would combine all Baltic Finnic peoples into a single state. In 1920, Finnish communists based in Soviet Russia attempted to assassinate the former Finnish White Guard Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim . On 14 October 1920, Finland and Soviet Russia signed
17557-405: 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
17738-587: The Soviet military reorganized and adopted different tactics, they renewed their offensive in February 1940 and overcame the Finnish defences on the Karelian Isthmus. This left the Finnish army in the main theatre of war near the breaking point, with a retreat seeming inevitable. Consequently, Finnish commander-in-chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim urged a peace deal with the Soviets, while the Finns still retained bargaining power. Hostilities ceased in March 1940 with
17919-666: The Soviet sphere. On 1 September 1939, Germany began its invasion of Poland , and two days later, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany. On 17 September, the Soviet invasion of Poland began. After the fall of Poland, Germany and the Soviet Union exchanged occupied Polish lands to establish a new border in accordance with the provisions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were soon forced to accept treaties that allowed
18100-455: The Soviets demanded limited territorial concessions from Finland, and even offered land in return, which would not have made sense if full Sovietization was intended. And according to Kotkin, Stalin seemed to be genuinely interested in reaching an agreement during the negotiations: he had personally attended six of the seven meetings with the Finns, and had multiple times reduced his demands. However, mutual mistrust and misunderstandings would mar
18281-408: The Soviets did not trust Germany and that war was considered possible between the two countries. The Red Army would not wait passively behind the border but would rather "advance to meet the enemy". Finnish representatives assured Yartsev that Finland was committed to a policy of neutrality and that the country would resist any armed incursion. Yartsev suggested that Finland cede or lease some islands in
18462-493: The Soviets to establish military bases on their soil. Estonia accepted the ultimatum by signing the agreement on 28 September. Latvia and Lithuania followed in October. Unlike the three Baltic countries, Finland started a gradual mobilisation under the guise of "additional refresher training ". The Soviets had already started intensive mobilisation near the Finnish border in 1938–39. Assault troops thought to be necessary for
18643-615: The Soviets, deception permeated all levels of war. And since they thought of war as just an extension of politics by other means, deception could and should be used and constantly considered in politics before a war began, if it was to work effectively. The American defence researcher Charles Smith identified different dimensions of Russian military deception. He divided it into multiple types—optical, thermal, radar, radio, sound/silence; multiple environments—aquatic, space, atmosphere—each involving active or passive measures; and organizational aspects—mobility, level, and organization. The levels are
18824-522: The Stavka had decided upon the strategic plan for their 1944 summer offensive [Bagration], they began to consider how the Germans could be deceived about the aims and scale of the offensive ... the key to the maskirovka operation was to reinforce the German conviction that operations would continue along this [southern] axis". In particular, the Stavka needed to be certain that the Germans believed
19005-574: The USSR for military purposes. On the next meeting on 23 October, Stalin conceded to lessen his demands: a reduction in the amount of land demanded in Karelia; a reduction of the Hanko garrison from 5000 to 4000 men; and reducing the length of lease from 30 years to whatever date the ongoing (second world) war in Europe would end. However, this sudden change, contrary to previous statements that Soviet demands were minimalist and thus unalterable, had surprised
19186-467: 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
19367-716: The analyst James Hansen, deception "is treated as an operational art to be polished by professors of military science and officers who specialize in this area." In 2015, Julian Lindley-French described strategic maskirovka as "a new level of ambition" established by Moscow to unbalance the West both politically and militarily. In military intelligence , the Russian doctrine roughly corresponds to Western notions of denial and deception . The United States Army 's Glossary of Soviet Military Terminology from 1955 defined maskirovka as "camouflage; concealment; disguise". The International Dictionary of Intelligence from 1990 defined it as
19548-402: The attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from its organization. The Soviets made several demands, including that Finland cede substantial border territories in exchange for land elsewhere, claiming security reasons – primarily the protection of Leningrad , 32 km (20 mi) from the Finnish border. When Finland refused, the Soviets invaded. Most sources conclude that
19729-556: The attack were masked by the construction of seventeen false bridges over the River Don . To the south of Stalingrad, for the southern arm of the pincer movement, 160,000 men with 550 guns, 430 tanks and 14,000 trucks were ferried across the much larger River Volga , which was beginning to freeze over with dangerous ice floes, entirely at night. Overall, Stavka succeeded in moving a million men, 1000 tanks, 14,000 guns and 1400 aircraft into position without alerting their enemy. Despite
19910-729: The broadcasting of the noise of pile-drivers and wide distribution of a pamphlet What the Soviet Soldier Must Know in Defence . In his memoirs Zhukov described them as such, noting that they were worked out at army group or "operational-tactical" level. The first offensive to have its own deception operation was in Zhukov's part of the attack on the Rzhev - Vyazma salient to the west of Moscow in July and August, 1942. The offensive
20091-403: 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
20272-642: The chaos of the October Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War almost two decades earlier. Soviet leaders believed that the old empire's extended borders provided territorial security and wanted Leningrad, only 32 km (20 mi) from the Finnish border, to enjoy a similar level of security against the rising power of Nazi Germany . In April 1938, NKVD agent Boris Yartsev contacted Finnish Foreign Minister Rudolf Holsti and Finnish Prime Minister Aimo Cajander , stating that
20453-552: The condition that he be allowed to implement Shaposhnikov's initial plan of a focused attack on the Karelian Isthmus to break the Mannerheim Line; it was accepted. In January 1940, the Leningrad Military District was reformed and renamed "North-Western Front". The Soviet forces were organised as follows: The Finnish strategy was dictated by geography. The 1,340 km (830 mi) border with
20634-610: The conventional military ones, strategic, operational, and tactical, while organization refers to the military branch concerned. Finally, Smith identified principles—plausibility, continuity through peace and war, variety, and persistent aggressive activity; and contributing factors, namely technological capability and political strategy. Smith also analyzed the Soviet doctrine, considering it as "a set of processes designed to mislead, confuse, and interfere with accurate data collection regarding all areas of Soviet plans, objectives, and strengths or weaknesses". The Battle of Kulikovo in 1380
20815-460: The correct appreciation by German air reconnaissance of a major build-up of forces on the River Don, the commander of the 6th Army, Friedrich Paulus took no action. He was caught completely by surprise, failing either to prepare his armour as a mobile reserve with fuel and ammunition, or to move it on the day of the attack. The historian David Glantz considered that the concealment of the scale of
20996-572: 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
21177-490: The daily activities of forces; a complexity of measures, directed to mislead the enemy regarding the presence and disposition of forces". Later versions of the doctrine also include strategic, political, and diplomatic means including manipulation of "the facts", situation, and perceptions to affect the media and opinion around the world, so as to achieve or facilitate tactical, strategic, national and international goals. Deception contributed to major Soviet victories including
21358-469: The deception. These forces built 833 dummy tanks , guns, vehicles, field kitchens and fuel tanks, and used their real and dummy equipment to simulate the unloading of armies from a railhead at Myatlevo , and the concentration of armour and motorized infantry as if preparing to attack Yukhnov. The radios communicated false traffic between the simulated armies and Front headquarters. The real tanks and other vehicles made tracks like those of troop columns. When
21539-506: The demands and the Soviet military build-up as a mere bluff on the part of Stalin, and were thus disinclined to reach an agreement. The Finns made two counteroffers to cede the Terijoki area to the Soviet Union. That would double the distance between Leningrad and the Finnish border but was far less than the Soviets had demanded. The Finns would also cede the islands in the Gulf of Finland, but they would not agree to lease any territory to
21720-536: The enemy "did not suspect that our well-camouflaged tanks were waiting for him. As we later learned from prisoners, we had managed to move our tanks forward unnoticed." Katukov's tanks were concealed in defensive emplacements prepared before the battle, with only their turrets above ground level . Glantz records that the German general Friedrich von Mellenthin wrote The horrible counter-attacks, in which huge masses of manpower and equipment took part, were an unpleasant surprise for us ... The most clever camouflage of
21901-407: The enemy as to political and military capabilities, intentions and timing of actions. In these spheres, as war is but an extension of politics, it includes political, economic and diplomatic measures as well as military. Russian military deception is broadly equated with maskirovka , but other Russian terms are also used in the area, including the "fog of war", tuman voyny . Khitrost means
22082-450: The enemy. By the time of Operation Bagration in 1944, Connor argues, the Russian doctrine of military deception already included all these aspects. The meaning evolved in Soviet practice and doctrine to include strategic, political, and diplomatic objectives, in other words operating at all levels . This differs from Western doctrines on deception, and from information warfare doctrines, by its emphasis on pragmatic aspects. According to
22263-524: The enemy; screening with smoke and technical deception; and using the cover of darkness. In the 1939 Russian invasion of Finland , white winter camouflage was worn by Soviet troops. The 1944 Soviet Military Encyclopedia defines military deception as the means of securing combat operations and the daily activities of forces; misleading the enemy about the presence and disposition of forces, objectives, combat readiness and plans. It asserts that it contributes to achieving surprise, preserving combat readiness and
22444-505: The extensively prepared defences-in-depth, with multiple lines of defence, minefields, and as many as 200 anti-tank guns per mile. Soviet defences were quickly built up using deception techniques to conceal the flow of men and equipment. This was accompanied by a whole suite of deception measures including feint attacks, false troop and logistics concentrations, radio deception, false airfields and false rumours. In mid-June 1943 German army high command ( OKH ) had estimated 1500 Soviet tanks in
22625-438: The extent of Soviet deception before the Cuban Missile Crisis, especially the way the Soviets hid the truth of its strategic missile deployment behind a mass of lies, on "a scale that most US planners could not comprehend". The Soviet Union made substantial use of deception while preparing for their military intervention of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The historian Mark Lloyd called the effect on the Prague Spring "devastating". When
22806-413: 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,
22987-439: The final meeting: the Soviets stopped responding to further Finnish letters and on 13 November, when the Finnish delegation was recalled from Moscow, no Soviet officials came to see them off. The Finns had left under the expectation that the negotiations would continue. Instead, the Soviet Union ramped up its military preparations. The negotiations had failed, as neither side was willing to substantially reduce their demands, nor
23168-456: 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
23349-412: The form of outright denial, as when, on 17 October 1962, the embassy official Georgy Bolshakov gave President John F. Kennedy a "personal message" from the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev reassuring him that "under no circumstances would surface-to-surface missiles be sent to Cuba". Hansen's analysis ends with a recognition of the Soviet advantage in deception in 1962. In Hansen's view, the fact that
23530-631: 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
23711-480: 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
23892-566: The higher levels, Army Group Centre and OKH failed to appreciate how strong the attacks would be, or the intention to encircle the Army Group. The "combination of display and concealment, directed at the highest command levels, typified their most successful deception." The Soviet intelligence services and the Soviet military used deceptive measures to conceal from the United States their intentions in Operation Anadyr , which led to
24073-473: The invasion did not begin deployment until October 1939. Operational plans made in September called for the invasion to start in November. On 5 October 1939, the Soviets invited a Finnish delegation to Moscow for negotiations. Juho Kusti Paasikivi , the Finnish envoy to Sweden, was sent to Moscow to represent the Finnish government Furthermore, the negotiations were attended by Stalin in person, signalling
24254-528: The main Soviet attack would be in the south. The Soviet plan successfully kept the German reserves doing nothing south of the Pripyat marshes until the battle to the north in Belorussia had already been decided. Stavka succeeded in concealing the size and position of very large movements of supplies, as well as of forces including seven armies, eleven aviation corps and over 200,000 troop replacements. As for
24435-506: The negotiations, producing an impasse. Before the war, Soviet leadership had expected total victory within a few weeks. The Red Army had just completed the invasion of eastern Poland at a cost of fewer than 4,000 casualties after Germany attacked Poland from the west. Stalin's expectations of a quick Soviet triumph were backed up by politician Andrei Zhdanov and military strategist Kliment Voroshilov , but other generals were more reserved. Red Army Chief of Staff Boris Shaposhnikov advocated
24616-524: 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
24797-413: The occupation of Finland. However, Joseph Stalin was not pleased with the conservative pace that the operation required and demanded new plans be drawn up. With the new plans, the key deadline for Finland's capitulation was to be Stalin's 60th birthday on 21 December. Convinced of the invasion's forthcoming success, Andrei Zhdanov , chairman of the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union, commissioned
24978-403: The offensive was the Red Army's "greatest feat". Deception was put into practice on a large scale in the 1943 Battle of Kursk , especially on the Red Army's Steppe Front commanded by Ivan Konev. This was a deception for a defensive battle, as Hitler was planning to attack the Kursk salient in a pincer movement. The Soviet forces were moved into position at night and carefully concealed, as were
25159-515: 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
25340-461: 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,
25521-506: The outbreak of war, but its reservists were equipped with warm civilian clothing. However, the sparsely-populated highly-agrarian Finland had to draft so many of its working men that the Finnish economy was massively strained because of a lack of workers. An even greater problem than lack of soldiers was the lack of materiel since foreign shipments of anti-tank weapons and aircraft were arriving only in small quantities. The ammunition situation
25702-446: 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
25883-453: 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
26064-459: 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
26245-418: 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
26426-479: 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
26607-472: 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 ,
26788-410: The real troop concentration to the north was conducted at night and in thick forests. Zhukov's attack began on 4 August, and the 20th and 31st Armies advanced 40 kilometres (25 mi) in two days. The Russians claimed that surprise had been achieved; this is confirmed by the fact that German intelligence failed to notice Zhukov's concentration of 20th and 31st Armies on Rzhev. Other small offensives on
26969-411: The regime change plan to a Soviet ambassador that the new government "will not be Soviet, but one of a democratic republic. Nobody is going to set up Soviets over there, but we hope it will be a government we can come to terms with as to ensure the security of Leningrad". According to Russian historian Yuri Kilin , the Soviet terms encompassed the strongest fortified approaches of the Finnish defences for
27150-491: 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
27331-402: The same front had poorly planned and executed deception measures, but these were largely unsuccessful. The successful deception for the attack on Rzhev showed that military deception could be effective, but that only certain Red Army commanders applied it correctly. Military deception based on secrecy was critical in hiding Soviet preparations for the decisive Operation Uranus encirclement in
27512-448: The seriousness of the effort. Paasikivi would later recount his surprise over the friendly atmosphere in which the delegation was received, and mentioned the pleasant manners of Stalin towards them. The meetings began on 12 October, with Molotov's offer of a mutual assistance pact, which the Finns immediately refused. To the Finns' surprise, Molotov dropped the offer and instead proposed an exchange of territory. The offer stipulated that
27693-433: The shelling was a false flag operation since there were no artillery units there, and it was carried out from the Soviet side of the border by an NKVD unit with the purpose of providing the Soviets with a casus belli and a pretext to withdraw from the non-aggression pact. Soviet war games held in March 1938 and 1939 had been based on a scenario in which border incidents taking place at the village of Mainila would spark
27874-487: The signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty in which Finland ceded 9% of its territory to the Soviet Union. Soviet losses were heavy, and the country's international reputation suffered. Their gains exceeded their pre-war demands, and the Soviets received substantial territories along Lake Ladoga and further north. Finland retained its sovereignty and enhanced its international reputation. The poor performance of
28055-468: The sites of the planned attack, elaborate disinformation was fed to the enemy. Defence lines were built to deceive German tactical reconnaissance. Civilians within 25 kilometres (16 mi) of the front were evacuated, and trenches were dug around the villages for Luftwaffe reconnaissance to see. Conversely, along the uninvolved Voronezh Front, bridging equipment and boats were prepared to suggest an offensive there. The five real bridges that were built for
28236-472: The strategic offensive itself, its location, strength and timing were effectively concealed. Stavka and the Red Army applied the doctrine of military deception at three levels: The German Army Group Centre (where the main attack fell) underestimated Soviet infantry by 40%, mechanised forces by 300% and the number of tanks as 400 to 1800, instead of the 4000 to 5200 in fact arrayed against them. The German high command (OKH) and Adolf Hitler grossly underestimated
28417-500: The success of German Blitzkrieg tactics , but they had been tailored to conditions in Central Europe , with its dense well-mapped network of paved roads. Armies fighting there had recognised supply and communications centres, which could be easily targeted by armoured vehicle regiments. Finnish Army centres, in contrast, were deep inside the country. There were no paved roads, and even gravel or dirt roads were scarce. Most of
28598-626: 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
28779-405: The survivability of objectives. The 1978 Soviet Military Encyclopedia defines deception similarly, placing additional stress on strategic levels, and explicitly including political , economic and diplomatic measures besides the military ones. It largely repeats the 1944 Encyclopedia's concept, but adds that Strategic maskirovka is carried out at national and theater levels to mislead
28960-459: 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
29141-466: The terrain consisted of trackless forests and swamps. The war correspondent John Langdon-Davies observed the landscape: "Every acre of its surface was created to be the despair of an attacking military force". Waging Blitzkrieg in Finland was a highly-difficult proposition, and according to Trotter, the Red Army failed to meet the level of tactical co-ordination and local initiative that would be required to execute such tactics in Finland. Commander of
29322-829: The threat to Army Group Centre, confidently redeploying a third of its artillery , half its tank destroyers and 88% of its tanks to the Southern front where OKH expected the Soviet attack. Only 580 German armoured vehicles were in place for the battle. In the battle, Army Group Centre was almost totally destroyed, losing its Fourth Army encircled east of Minsk , its 3rd Panzer Army (LIII Corps encircled in Vitebsk ), and its Ninth Army encircled east of Bobruisk . In military historian Bruce Pirnie's view, "the Germans were more completely fooled prior to Operation Bagration than they had been prior to Operation Uranus [at Stalingrad]". Pirnie concluded, based largely on Bagration and Uranus with
29503-786: 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
29684-511: 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
29865-400: The various parties and groups participating in the people's front of toilers. Soviet leaflets dropped over Helsinki on the first day of the war stated: "Finnish Comrades! We come to you not as conquerors, but as liberators of the Finnish people from the oppression of the capitalists and the landlords". In 1939, Soviet military leadership had formulated a realistic and comprehensive plan for
30046-415: The war. Molotov claimed that the incident was a Finnish artillery attack. He demanded that Finland apologise for the incident and to move its forces beyond a line 20–25 km (12–16 mi) from the border. Finland denied responsibility for the attack, rejected the demands and called for a joint Finnish–Soviet commission to examine the incident. In turn, the Soviet Union claimed that the Finnish response
30227-723: The world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on the Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has
30408-561: Was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland . It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II , and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. Despite superior military strength, especially in tanks and aircraft, the Soviet Union suffered severe losses and initially made little headway. The League of Nations deemed
30589-430: Was alarming, as stockpiles had cartridges, shells and fuel to last only 19 to 60 days. The ammunition shortage meant the Finns could seldom afford counter-battery or saturation fire . Finnish tank forces were operationally nonexistent. The ammunition situation was alleviated somewhat since Finns were largely armed with Mosin–Nagant rifles dating from the Finnish Civil War, which used the same 7.62×54mmR cartridge that
30770-492: Was cited by Smith as an early example of the successful use of deception; a regiment had hidden in the forest, and the battle is seen as the beginning of the freeing of the Russian lands from Tatar rule. At least three elements, namely deception, concealment, and disinformation with false defensive works and false troop concentrations, were used by Georgy Zhukov in the 1939 Battles of Khalkhin Gol against Japan. The deceptions included apparent requests for material for bunkers,
30951-547: Was conducted by Ivan Konev 's Kalinin Front on the north, and Zhukov's Western Front with 31st Army and 20th Army on the south. Zhukov decided to simulate a concentration of forces some 200 kilometres (120 mi) to the south near Yukhnov , in the sector of his 43rd, 49th and 50th Armies. He created two deception operation staffs in that sector, and allocated 4 deception ( maskirovka ) companies, 3 rifle companies, 122 vehicles, 9 tanks and other equipment including radios for
31132-706: Was described in the West as maskirovka . As the BBC writer, Lucy Ash put it: "Five weeks later, once the annexation had been rubber-stamped by the Parliament in Moscow, Putin admitted Russian troops had been deployed in Crimea after all. But the lie had served its purpose. Maskirovka is used to wrong-foot your enemies, to keep them guessing." The area was swiftly occupied by so-called little green men , armed men in military trucks who came at night, with no insignia, so that even pro-Russian activists did not understand what
31313-421: Was developed as one of the most important means of achieving surprise in operations. ' " The 1935 Instructions on Deep Battle and then the 1936 Field Regulations place increasing stress on battlefield deception. The Instructions define the methods of achieving surprise as air superiority; making forces mobile and manoeuvrable; concealing concentration of forces; keeping fire preparations secret; misleading
31494-426: Was either side able to fully trust the other. The Finns were fearful of an encroachment on their sovereignty, while the Soviets were (claiming to be) fearful of a springboard for international enemies in Finland, in close proximity to Leningrad. No promises to the contrary managed to persuade the other. Additionally, both sides had misunderstood the others position: the Finns had assumed that the Soviets had opened up on
31675-405: 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
31856-421: 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
32037-498: Was happening. They were later revealed as Russian special forces, but at the time Vladimir Putin denied this. Time magazine reported in April 2014 that the troops in eastern Ukraine described themselves as Cossacks , whereas analysts in Ukraine and the West considered at least some of them to be Russian special forces. Their obscure origins made them seem more menacing and harder to deal with. Russian language Russian
32218-473: Was hostile, renounced the non-aggression pact and severed diplomatic relations with Finland on 28 November. In the following years, Soviet historiography described the incident as Finnish provocation. Doubt on the official Soviet version was cast only in the late 1980s, during the policy of glasnost . The issue has continued to divide Russian historiography even after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at
32399-424: Was much higher, however, since for example, 12 Soviet divisions were deployed north of Lake Ladoga. Finland had a large force of reservists, which was trained in regular maneuvers, some of which had experience from the recent Finnish Civil War. The soldiers were also almost universally trained in basic survival techniques, such as skiing. The Finnish Army was not able to equip all its soldiers with proper uniforms at
32580-465: Was needed to approve and ratify military decisions, which they evaluated based on their political merits. The dual system further complicated the Soviet chain of command and annulled the independence of commanding officers. After the Soviet success at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol against Japan, on the USSR's eastern border, Soviet High Command had divided into two factions. One side was represented by
32761-402: Was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese. Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between
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