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97-778: American Westerns were amongst the US films imported into the early Soviet Union. As a result, certain Soviet films at the time are seen to incorporate Western elements. For example, the image of the Western cowboy is used to symbolize the United States and the West as a whole in the Soviet silent comedy The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924). Red Devils

194-674: 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

291-513: A cowboy , complete with a lasso and gun. His appearance and behavior are conspicuously out of place in snow-covered Moscow. West and Jeddy are satirical characters, but they are portrayed as well-intentioned and more noble than the Russian criminals. For example, West's patriotism inspires him to fight like a "real American" to defend himself and the Countess. As Jeddy learns that Russia does not match his stereotypes, he also stops looking like

388-651: 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

485-519: 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

582-484: A žban ), parodies of religious icons, and references to films like Neighbors , The Cabinet of Dr Caligari , and Dr Mabuse the Gambler . The cinematography and editing reflect the characters' mindsets: when West is homesick, the film superimposes American faces onto Soviet women, and when Jeddy forgets West's license plate number, it shows the number 999 dissolve into 666. Instead of simply providing exposition,

679-580: A "spacial metric grid" to visualize the hypothetical movie screen. He developed a preference for short shots over long shots to avoid mistakes. Kuleshov believed editing distinguished film from theater, and considered montage as fundamental to cinema as harmony is to music. He rejected Konstantin Stanislavski 's acting method , which focused on psychology and emotion. Instead, Kuleshov wanted his actors to emphasize precise, legible movements. He found Hollywood action and slapstick more engaging than

776-550: A bodyguard. When West and Jeddy arrive in Moscow , a thief steals one of their suitcases and brings it to a gang leader named Zhban. Realizing that West is wealthy and distrusts Russians, Zhban concocts a plan to scam him. West and Jeddy hire a taxi, but Jeddy gets separated and forgets the car's license plate. Frustrated and concerned for West's safety, he hijacks a carriage. When the police try to arrest him, Jeddy escapes by fleeing along rooftops, then unexpectedly reunites with Ellie,

873-558: 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

970-484: 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

1067-588: 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

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1164-622: 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

1261-526: 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

1358-476: A stereotypical cowboy. By the end of the film, he wears plain contemporary clothes. The film satirizes Western perceptions of the Soviet Union, but it has also been read as critiquing the Soviet Union itself. Rimgaila Salys says the film showcases the negative effects of Lenin's New Economic Policy. Vlada Petrić suggests that West's kidnapping and show trial, as well as the police raid that saves him, echo

1455-598: A tightrope, claiming that Kuleshov left him hanging for a half hour while criticizing his insufficient training. The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks is a satirical comedy. Kuleshov considered the film a "verification" of his approach to montage and production, and Rimgaila Salys describes it as a "compendium" of his cinematic ideas. The film includes chases and stunts inspired by popular American cinema, rapid editing, slow motion , flashbacks, and re-contextualized documentary footage. Kuleshov includes visual jokes (such as Zhban getting hit with

1552-410: A time traveler named Julian West visits a utopian Socialist future. In Christensen's analysis, this allusion emphasizes the Soviet Union's failure to achieve Bellamy's ideals. He notes that the film depicts Russia as a nation of poor criminals, and that the ending merely celebrates pre-revolutionary architecture, not anything created by the Bolsheviks themselves. Conversely, Marina Levitina does interpret

1649-560: A woman he once saved from being mugged in the United States. Ellie vouches for his character, explaining that he falsely believed Russians were savages, and convinces the police to let him free. Zhban returns West's suitcase, claiming he recovered it from a barbarian, and invites West to stay with him for safety. He gives West a fake tour of Moscow, which purportedly shows that the Moscow State University and Bolshoi Theatre have been destroyed. One of Zhban's gang members,

1746-539: 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,

1843-553: Is a 1924 Soviet silent comedy film directed by Lev Kuleshov . Kuleshov considered the film a "verification" of his theories around editing and montage , and he drew inspiration from American cinema , which he found more engaging than Russian cinema. The film follows J. S. West and Cowboy Jeddy, two Americans who visit the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution . West is wealthy but naive, and he expects

1940-481: 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

2037-401: Is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian , and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages, at least at the conversational level. Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Older letters of

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2134-610: 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

2231-466: Is a revolutionary action film that also borrows from the Western genre. As cultural restrictions tightened during the Stalinist era, however, Western-inspired films in the Soviet Union became few and far between. It is worth noting, however, that Stalin was an avid enjoyer of Hollywood Western films, and is argued by some to have desired the Western genre within the Soviet Union. 1957's Miles of Fire

2328-541: Is barbaric; when Mr. Stupidhead instead sees a functional society, he assumes it's a facade. The film's working title was How Will This End? Its ultimate title alludes to adventure stories like The Legend of the Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegel in the Land of Flanders and Elsewhere . Kuleshov and his actors choreographed scenes and rehearsed using stopwatches and metronomes to avoid wasting film. In one scene, Boris Barnet fell while traversing

2425-488: 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

2522-624: 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

2619-525: 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

2716-564: 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

2813-571: Is one of the earliest examples of a Soviet Western as it was released years before the Ostern genre became formalized and prevalent. The Western genre saw a resurgence in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, largely resulting from the Khrushchev Thaw . In 1962, the USSR allowed for the screening of certain US and foreign films. The Magnificent Seven , an American Western starring Steve McQueen, become

2910-402: 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

3007-569: 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

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3104-585: 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

3201-518: 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

3298-470: 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

3395-1000: 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

3492-657: 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 is still commonly used as

3589-413: 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

3686-584: 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

3783-658: 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

3880-685: The heroes and the American Army as the villains, a motif inspired by highly successful German Osterns. These films were immensely popular among the East German audience, furthering the widespread German fascination of Native American culture (see Native American Hobbyism in Germany ). A considerable strain into the genre was added by Romanian cinematographers, which included adaptations of Fenimore Cooper stories, with many of them being co-productions with Western directors. White Sun of

3977-427: The title cards offer comments like "Comfort is a relative concept". In one instance, an intertitle explains that West sees the room spinning, and the camera shows the spinning room that he perceives. Kuleshov arranged objects, characters, and motion along grid lines and 45 degree angles, which he felt made the action easiest for audiences to understand. For example, when Jeddy crosses the tightrope between buildings,

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4074-468: 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

4171-471: 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

4268-406: The Countess, tries to seduce West. Zhban hires another group of criminals to dress as exaggerated Russian stereotypes, kidnap West and the Countess, stage a show trial, and sentence them to death. Zhban then "rescues" West and the Countess in exchange for West's money. Zhban's scheme is interrupted by the police, who arrive with Jeddy and Ellie. The police give West a real tour of Moscow, showing him

4365-491: The Desert (1970) stands out as the quintessential Ostern, with its release considered by some to usher in the "golden era" of Soviet Western film. Set in rural Turkmenistan, the film incorporates many elemental Western characteristics, namely wide shots of empty skies and nature, transportation via horse and leather saddle, and the lone stoic protagonist. The film quickly obtained a cult-like status, with multiple catchphrases from

4462-803: The Easterns of Hungarian director György Szomjas . He directed two films ( The Wind Blows Under Your Feet and Wrong-Doers ) in the 1970s, shot in the Hortobágy National Park , the best approximation of wastelands he could find in the country. The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks ( Russian : Необычайные приключения мистера Веста в стране Большевиков , romanized :  Neobychainye priklyucheniya mistera Vesta v strane bolshevikov )

4559-532: 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,

4656-581: The Horse Opera (1964) gained popularity amongst Soviet citizens and those in the Eastern Bloc. Though the film is largely a parody of the Western genre, its commercial success nonetheless furthered the familiarity of Western tropes within the Eastern Bloc and the general Soviet audience. Karl May 's Treasure of the Silver Lake , West Germany, co-production with Yugoslavia, was seminal for

4753-590: 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

4850-526: 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

4947-807: 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

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5044-458: 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

5141-405: 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

5238-570: The Tsar and his family , fought a civil war , and established the communist Soviet Union. Western countries largely condemned the revolution's violence; the United States would not diplomatically recognize the Soviet Union until 1933. Lenin nationalized the country's film industry in 1919, but his 1921 New Economic Policy required it to fund itself. The state paid for new Soviet cinema with profits from imported American films. These imported films were extremely popular, leading Lev Kuleshov to coin

5335-467: 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

5432-593: The beginning of the era of German Red Westerns. The film prompted a highly successful series of Indianerfilme ("Indian Films") about Winnetou and others, produced by the East German DEFA studios. The East German The Sons of the Great Bear (1966) was a seminal Red Western that turned the traditional American "Cowboy and Indian" conventions on their head, casting the Native Americans as

5529-403: 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

5626-511: The country to be barbaric. A Soviet gang leader exploits West's fears by staging a fake arrest and trial, then offers to "rescue" him in exchange for money. When West is actually rescued by the Soviet police, he realizes his expectations and stereotypes were wrong and celebrates the country. Upon its initial release, the film garnered popularity among Soviet audiences; however, Soviet critics criticized its emphasis on American themes and its lack of political engagement. Despite its initial popularity,

5723-572: 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

5820-420: The ending "ambivalent". He notes that the film consistently emphasizes false images of Russia, and therefore the audience can't be confident the closing images are actually true. The ending includes an incongruous scene of factory workers, which is unconnected to the plot and not observed by West himself. Denise Youngblood speculates Kuleshov may have been forced to include the scene, but Miguel Gaggiotti suggests

5917-413: 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,

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6014-430: The film compares Zhban to a film director , commanding actors in a performance and orchestrating visual effects to deceive Mr. West, and that West remains equally credulous throughout the film. He accepts the police officer's tour exactly as he accepted Zhban's fake tour, and he's impressed by the military parade, which a title card asserts is "real" although it's actually an editing trick. Likewise, David Gillespie finds

6111-469: The film for not being sufficiently Russian. Critics unfavorably compared Kuleshov to Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin , whose films were unequivocally pro-Bolshevik. By September 1926, Mr. West was censored. Despite this backlash, Kuleshov was eventually awarded the Order of Lenin shortly before his death in 1970. Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to

6208-441: The film juxtaposes the workers' naturalism against the artificiality of the parade, emphasizing that the parade is merely another performance. Audiences responded positively to Mr. West ' s accessible American style, and it was Kuleshov's most popular film. In retrospect, it is considered the beginning of a "golden age" of Soviet cinema. Peter Christensen notes that the film has endured better than other Soviet comedies of

6305-640: The film making its way into casual conversation. "Gibanica Western" was a short-lived term for the Yugoslav equivalent of the Ostern, more commonly known as partisan film and, sometimes, the Partisan Western. They were made in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and were about the partisans in World War II . Gibanica is a traditional Balkan pastry, and the name of the genre is dubbed in an analogy with " spaghetti Western ". The Goulash Westerns are

6402-449: The film was censored two years after its release. Today, critics and historians often consider Mr. West the beginning of a "golden age" of Soviet cinema. The movie satirizes American perceptions of the Soviet Union. J. S. West, director of the YMCA , plans to visit the Soviet Union . His wife reads magazine articles that portray Russians as barbarians, and asks him to bring Cowboy Jeddy as

6499-443: The film's final shot of a Russian radio tower as a boast of new technological achievements. Greta Matzner-Gore observes that the film is built around nested and metatextual imitations, highlighting cinema's potential to mislead. West's kidnappers imitate pictures of Americans who were imitating stereotypical Russians, but in reality, the "Americans" in the photos were played by the same Russian actors who "imitate" them. She notes that

6596-456: 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

6693-631: 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

6790-480: 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

6887-468: The lead roles. The movie was filmed from 15 December 1923 to 7 April 1924. Nikolai Aseyev wrote an initial script for the film, but Kuleshov and Pudovkin extensively rewrote it. Kuleshov later said they kept only the characters' names. The plot may have been influenced by a 1923 story in Krokodil called "The Adventures of Mr. Stupidhead in Russia", which also featured a foreigner who believes Russia

6984-476: The most successful of these films commercially, becoming an instant cult classic amongst Soviet moviegoers. The overwhelming popularity and commercial demand of films like The Magnificent Seven enticed Soviet filmmakers and state-run film institutions to experiment with Western elements in their own productions, resulting in the creation of the Soviet Western. The Czechoslovakian comedy Lemonade Joe or

7081-524: 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

7178-515: 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

7275-461: 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,

7372-446: 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

7469-453: 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

7566-459: 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

7663-418: 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

7760-479: 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

7857-472: 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 ,

7954-491: 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

8051-467: The still-standing University and Theatre and a military parade. Impressed, West sends home a telegram asking his wife to burn the magazines and hang up a picture of Vladimir Lenin . The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks was produced and set in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution . Led by Vladimir Lenin, the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian government, executed

8148-679: 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

8245-459: 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

8342-544: The tactics of the Soviet secret police . He argues that Soviet audiences would have recognized the implication that the gang does represent the Bolsheviks after all, and he interprets West's final telegram as mocking unrealistic communist rhetoric. Peter Christensen believes the name "J. S. West" not only alludes to the Western world and the Wild West , but also to Edward Bellamy 's 1888 novel Looking Backward , in which

8439-496: The term amerikanshchina ( American -itis ). Many Russian filmmakers left after the revolution, but Kuleshov stayed and worked to develop a new Soviet cinema. He organized a workshop called the Kuleshov Collective to develop a new approach to filmmaking. His approach was informed by film shortages. The workshop staged theatrical "films without film", using curtains and lighting to represent cuts and close-ups and

8536-547: The time, and David Gillespie considers it a "masterpiece of technique". The film also has historical value as a record of Moscow in the 1920s, showcasing architecture like the original Cathedral of Christ the Saviour . Despite the film's success, Kuleshov was criticized for his focus on aesthetics and technique over ideology and his focus on American characters; six of Kuleshov's 13 films would feature American characters and themes. In particular, Viktor Shklovsky criticized

8633-786: 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

8730-511: 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

8827-448: The wire is horizontal and the buildings are vertical. In one scene, a jug is placed close to the camera to emphasize its eventual destruction; Kuleshov determined the most impactful framing of the jug using a mathematical formula he devised. The actors' performances are physical and exaggerated. In contrast, the production design is minimalist. Many scenes avoid sets by using close-ups or filming against solid black backgrounds. This

8924-400: The work of Russian directors like Aleksandr Khanzhonkov , and felt cinema should be efficient and industrial to help its audience embrace modernity. In 1924, the Kuleshov Collective released The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks as its first feature. Kuleshov himself directed the film, and his students, including Boris Barnet and Vsevolod Pudovkin , played

9021-697: 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

9118-405: 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

9215-421: 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

9312-402: Was partly a stylistic choice to focus on the actors and key objects, and partly a response to material shortages. J. S. West is modeled on Harold Lloyd . He is gullible, effeminate, bourgeois , naive, prudish, and excessively patriotic, waving an American flag when arriving in Moscow and wearing American flag socks. Jeddy, modeled on Tom Mix and Douglas Fairbanks , is a caricature of

9409-402: 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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