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Saint Michael's Castle

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The State Russian Museum ( Russian : Государственный Русский музей ), formerly known as the Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III ( Russian : Русский Музей Императора Александра III ), on Arts Square in Saint Petersburg , is the world's largest depository of Russian fine art. It is also one of the largest art museums in the world with a total area over 30 hectares. In 2022 it attracted 2,651,688 visitors, ranking twelfth on list of most-visited art museums in the world.

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90-540: 59°56′25″N 30°20′16″E  /  59.9404°N 30.3377°E  / 59.9404; 30.3377 Saint Michael's Castle ( Russian : Миха́йловский за́мок , Mikhailovsky zamok ), also called the Mikhailovsky Castle or the Engineers' Castle ( Russian : Инженерный замок , Inzhenerny zamok ), is a former royal residence in the historic centre of Saint Petersburg , Russia . Saint Michael's Castle

180-674: 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

270-519: 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

360-493: 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) Russian Museum The museum was established on April 13, 1896, upon enthronement of the emperor Nicholas II to commemorate his father, Alexander III . Its original collection was composed of artworks taken from the Hermitage Museum , Alexander Palace , and

450-484: 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

540-588: 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

630-622: 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

720-526: 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

810-649: A restoration workshop at the Russian Museum. However, owing to a lack of funds, he was not destined to succeed. It was in 1922 that the restoration workshop of the Russian Museum was established. Its first director was the painter-restorer N.A. Okolovich. The restoration workshop consisted of two sections: the main one, which worked for the Museum, and the regional one, which was engaged in saving cultural monuments in Petrograd and other cities of Russia. In 1935,

900-550: A transitional period in the history of architectural styles in Russia. The classicist elements, together with Romantic ones, make up a peculiar "costumed architecture" in Saint Michael's Castle, which anticipates the Empire style of the early nineteenth century. Sometimes the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is called pre- Romanticism in Russian art history, but in this case, it would be more accurate to say that

990-539: 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,

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1080-481: 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

1170-401: 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

1260-610: 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

1350-682: Is an original combination of the composition of the Porte of Saint-Denis, with two obelisks and arches on each side, and the traditional façade of an urban palazzo with a triangular pediment. The facades of the palace in Parma and the castle in Saint Petersburg are almost the same. The spectacular octagonal courtyard of Saint Michael's Castle has prototypes not only in the classical architecture of Italy (the palace in Caprarola ), it goes back to

1440-488: 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

1530-624: 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

1620-522: Is decorated with bas-reliefs depicting scenes of two Russian victories over Sweden during the Great Northern War . Paul I was assassinated only 40 nights after he moved into his newly built castle. He was murdered on 12 March 1801, in his own bedroom, by a group of dismissed officers headed by General Bennigsen . The conspirators forced him to a table, and tried to compel him to sign his abdication . Paul offered some resistance, and one of

1710-573: 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

1800-564: 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

1890-402: 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

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1980-569: 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

2070-585: 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

2160-591: Is staffed by artists with the highest and the highest restoration category. The department includes a sector of chemical and biological research and a sector of the history and theory of museum restoration. In 2014, the Department of Restoration of Museum Properties restored 4,511 exhibits, of which 280 were restored with special complexity. 5,930 exhibits were prepared for 77 museum exhibitions (preparation of preservation reports, preventive conservation and restoration, packing and unpacking of exhibits). 150 meetings of

2250-532: Is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of

2340-518: 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

2430-470: 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

2520-1000: 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

2610-413: 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

2700-534: The Imperial Academy of Arts . The task to restructure the interiors according to the need of future exposition was imposed on Vasily Svinyin. The grand opening took place on the 17 of March, 1898. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 , many private collections were nationalized and relocated to the Russian Museum. These included Kazimir Malevich 's Black Square . The main building of

2790-513: The Maltese order. The architecture of the colonnade of the state passage through the southern gate and the main staircase of Saint Michael's Castle correlates with similar compositions from Baroque Western Europe, such as the Royal Palace of Caserta near Naples by Luigi Vanvitelli . The mix of classicist and baroque motifs in the architecture of Saint Michael's Castle places it in

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2880-516: The Moyka River from the Fontanka . It was originally surrounded by water on all sides. It could be accessed via bridges guarded by sentry guards. The canal on the south side (reconstructed in 2003) came close to the basement. The building was approached from Italian Street through triple semi-circular gates, the middle passage of which was reserved for members of the imperial family. Behind them

2970-605: The Nevsky Prospekt (1752–1754). The project of Benois Building (or 'Corpus Benua') was developed in 1910-1912 by the famous Russian architect Leon Benois . The construction started in 1914, but was interrupted by the First World War . After the Russian Revolution , in 1919 the Benois Building was completed. In 1930s it was assigned to the Russian museum. Today the collection shows Russian art from

3060-747: The Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It

3150-584: 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

3240-641: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to

3330-835: The army 's Main Engineering School (later to become the Nikolayevskaya Engineering Academy and now the Military Engineering-Technical University). From then on, the building was known as the Engineers' Castle . In the early 1990s, Saint Michael's Castle became a branch of the Russian Museum and housed its Portrait Gallery, featuring official portraits of the Russian Emperors and Empresses and various dignitaries and celebrities from

3420-533: The 10th century up to the 21st century, covering all genres from the old Russian icon painting to contemporary art. All process on the restoration of works of art in the Russian Museum is carried out at the Museum Valuables Restoration Service. The need to set up a special restoration workshop at the Russian Museum was first raised in 1906. At that time, the artist and restorer A. Boravskiy drew up his famous project to set up

3510-519: 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

3600-471: 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

3690-540: The Conservation and Restoration Department was divided into laboratories and sections: painting, new painting, sculpture, applied art and folk art. During the 1950s and 1960s, new workshops were set up. In 1953, a workshop for graphic arts restoration, in 1954 for Old Russian painting, in 1961 for wooden sculpture , decorative carving and furniture and a workshop for textile restoration, in 1969 for plaster and stone sculpture and 1970 for applied art. At present,

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3780-532: 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,

3870-590: 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

3960-526: 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

4050-661: The Restoration Commission were held, at which the most important issues on the research and methods of restoration of museum exhibits were considered. As of 1 January 2019, the Department of Restoration of Museum Estates was transformed into the Service of Restoration of Museum Estates. The Ethnographic Department was originally set up in a building specially designed by Vladimir Svinyin in 1902. The museum soon housed gifts received by Emperor's family from representatives of peoples inhabiting various regions of

4140-682: The Russian Empire. Further exhibits were purchased by Nicholas II and other members of his family as State financing was not enough to purchase new exhibits. In 1934, the Ethnographic Department was given the status of an independent museum: the Russian Museum of Ethnography . The city of Málaga , home to thousands of Russian expats, signed an agreement to host the first overseas branch of the State Russian Museum, which opened in March 2015. Works displayed in

4230-807: 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

4320-458: 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

4410-458: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian

4500-467: 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

4590-467: The assassins struck him with a sword, and he was then strangled and trampled to death. He was succeeded by his son, Emperor Alexander I , who was actually in the palace at the time and was informed of his accession by General Nicholas Zubov , one of the assassins. After Paul's death, the imperial family returned to the Winter Palace; Saint Michael's Castle was abandoned and in 1823 was given to

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4680-403: 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

4770-855: The castle follows the arch of the Porte Saint-Denis in Paris , built-in 1672 according to the design of François Blondel the Elder, the founder of French classicism . It is known that in 1782, while still the heir, Paul was in Parma during his travels in Western Europe , and met with the French architect Petitot . The design of the main façade of the Ducal Palace of Colorno at Parma, commissioned by Ferdinand I of Bourbon, Duke of Parma

4860-572: 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

4950-526: The distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of the consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate

5040-413: 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,

5130-402: The final reading amendments that state that all schools and kindergartens in the country are to transition to education in Latvian . From 2025, all children will be taught in Latvian only. On 28 September 2023, Latvian deputies approved The National Security Concept, according to which from 1 January 2026, all content created by Latvian public media (including LSM ) should be only in Latvian or

5220-505: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to

5310-480: 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

5400-421: The halls of the palace retain the Italianate opulent interiors of the former imperial residence. Other buildings and locations, assigned to the Russian museum, include the Summer Palace of Peter I (1710–1714) with the Summer Garden , the Marble Palace of Count Orlov (1768–1785), St Michael's Castle of Emperor Paul (1797–1801), the cabin of Peter the Great , and the Rastrelliesque Stroganov Palace on

5490-408: The interior continued until March 1801. In 1800, the bronze equestrian Monument to Peter the Great was set up in front of the castle. This statue had been designed during Peter the Great's lifetime and later, with the casting being completed in 1747 by the architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli . By order of Paul I, the inscription " From Great Grandson to Great Grandfather " was made on the pedestal that

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5580-413: The late 17th to the early 20th century. In 1991, the Russian museum began a massive renovation of the Castle. Lasting for over 30 years, the renovation works involved various contractors, including "Vozrozhdenie", "Renessans-Restavratsiya", and "Setl Group" . As of 2021, the Russian Museum expected to finish the Castle's renovation in 2024. The Castle is oriented as a square with rounded corners, inside

5670-401: The museum is the Mikhailovsky Palace , the Neoclassical former residence of Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich , erected in 1819–1825 to a design by Carlo Rossi on Square of Arts in St Petersburg. Upon the death of the Grand Duke the residence was named after his wife as the Palace of the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna , and became famous for its many theatrical presentations and balls. Some of

5760-420: 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

5850-419: The octagonal early Christian baptisteries . Here, despite its seeming innovativeness, the deep Christian traditions of Saint Petersburg construction can be traced. Statues in the niches of the southern facade of Saint Michael's Castle are personifications , symbolic of the virtues of the ideal monarch. These include: Power , Abundance , Victory , and Glory , all related to the chivalric symbolism of

5940-515: 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

6030-401: 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,

6120-446: 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

6210-453: 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

6300-406: 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

6390-418: 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

6480-479: 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

6570-472: 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 ,

6660-491: 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

6750-512: The restoration department is made up of 16 workshops (sectors) for all types of materials, employing, its figures, 95 people. The department includes the following restoration workshops: easel painting , Old Russian paintings, mixed media painting, graphics , ceramics and glassware , textiles , metalwork , veneered furniture, polychrome and gilded carving, carved icons and wooden sculpture, picture frames, plaster and stone sculpture, contemporary art objects (established in 2010). The department

6840-414: The round corner towers, created an image of a citadel of Order of Malta's knights. The development of the composition of the new imperial residence, through a series of variations, led to a square block with an octagonal courtyard which recalls both the round Villa Farnese Palace in Caprarola and its pentagonal external silhouette, by the architect Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola . The main south façade of

6930-567: The six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on the Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and

7020-631: The square, there is an octagonal inner courtyard . The main entrance to the castle is to the south. Three angled bridges formed the link between the building and the square of the Connettables in front of it, after the square of the same name in Chantilly , the property of the Princes of Condé that Paul had visited during his stays abroad in June 1782. The building is located near the source of

7110-679: The survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language. In

7200-459: 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

7290-786: 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

7380-584: The unique appearance of the Saint Michael's Castle represents not only pre-Romantic or Romantic architecture but is above all an architectural portrait of the Emperor himself. 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

7470-511: 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

7560-477: Was a broad, straight avenue, along which were built the stables and the manège It ended at the three-storey corridor pavilions, beyond which the forecourt fortifications began. At the end of 1798, Paul I became Grandmaster of the Order of Malta . The appearance of Saint Michael's Castle combined Romantic sentiments and Maltese symbolism. The enclosed volume of the building, the rounded corners associated with

7650-460: Was built as a residence for Emperor Paul I of Russia by architects Vincenzo Brenna and Vasily Bazhenov in 1797–1801. It was named for St Michael the Archangel, patron saint of the royal family . The castle looks different from each side, as the architects used motifs of various architectural styles such as French Classicism , Italian Renaissance and Gothic . Saint Michael's Castle

7740-569: Was built to the south of the Summer Garden and replaced the small wooden palace of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna . Afraid of intrigues and assassination plots, Emperor Paul I disliked the Winter Palace where he never felt safe. Due to his personal fascination with medieval knights and his constant fear of assassination, the new royal residence was built like a castle around an octagonal courtyard. The building with rounded corners

7830-405: 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

7920-421: 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

8010-761: Was surrounded by the waters of the Moika River , the Fontanka River and two specially dug canals (the Church Canal and the Sunday Canal), transforming the castle area into an artificial island which could only be reached by drawbridges . Construction began on 26 February ( N.S. 9 March), 1797 and the castle was solemnly consecrated on 8 November 1800, i.e. on St Michael's Day in the Eastern Orthodox calendar, though finishing work on

8100-402: 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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