194-583: Stepan Georgevich Shaumian ( Russian : Степан Георгиевич Шаумян ; Armenian : Ստեփան Գեւորգի Շահումյան , romanized : Stepan Gevorgi Shahumyan ; 1 October 1878 – 20 September 1918) was an Armenian Bolshevik revolutionary and politician active throughout the Caucasus . His role as a leader of the Russian Revolution in the Caucasus earned him the nickname of the "Caucasian Lenin",
388-674: 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
582-519: 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
776-842: A decade later. As early as 1694, he established a dockyard in Archangel and built an entire ship by himself. Russia suffered from an acute lack of expertise, a problem Peter mitigated by going to the foreign quarters in Moscow ; there, in a relaxed environment far removed from the throne, he learned the particulars of such things as shipbuilding, navigation, military formation, and the erection of fortifications. Peter wanted to be everywhere at once, and see everything for himself. Not taking his role as tsar very seriously, he and his noble friends often staged elaborate drinking rituals and other forms of horseplay, displays of personal excess that helped unite his circle of friends through talk and drink. However, at
970-476: A direct attack could have succeeded, but the Ukrainian diversion turned out to be a disaster for Charles. Charles's long baggage train out of Riga , along with 12,000 reinforcements, were caught by fast-moving Russian cavalry in the fall of 1708. They harassed the reinforcements and supplies, and in the ensuing Battle of Lesnaya Peter's dragoons fought the Swedes to a standstill. Facing increasing Russian numbers,
1164-509: A farce, Peter was tenacious. He understood that the reason he had lost the first battle was Turkish control of the sea, so Peter commissioned the construction of a large fleet at Voronezh on the upper Don. He worked vigilantly himself, using the shipbuilding skills he had learned earlier in his life to great effect. Thus, he was able to launch a fleet of 30 seagoing vessels and over 1,000 transports north of Azov in April 1696. This fleet accompanied
1358-468: A firing line, in a low wooded area to side of the main Russian camp. Meanwhile, Peter prepared as well, moving his cavalry north to move on the Swedish left flank and also arranging his troops into a line. Charles took on the burden of attack, once again counting on the steadiness and experience of his troops to break the Russian lines. The Swedish right wing led the ensuing attack; as in earlier battles,
1552-455: A force of 70,000 infantry, twice that which Peter had brought with him during the first siege, and successfully cut off the flow of Turkish supplies. After a month of attrition, a force of 2,000 cossacks stormed the fort and, although rebuffed, captured part of its outer workings. The Turks, accepting defeat, ceded the fort to the Russians on July 18, 1696. The events at Azov proved to Peter
1746-588: 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) Military history of Imperial Russia The military history of the Russian Empire encompasses the history of armed conflict in which the Russian Empire participated. This history stretches from its creation in 1721 by Peter the Great , until
1940-467: A head much later under Catherine the Great with the First Partition of Poland . Finally, it put Russia into direct contact with another of the great powers of Europe, Germany. Peter himself emerged a national hero; scripts at the time compared him to Hercules , Samson , and David . The marathon Great Northern War was not the last war during Peter's tsardom, which saw one last short war in
2134-656: A historian at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow , who told the Russian daily Kommersant : Historian Ronald Grigor Suny has stressed the importance of Shaumian's efforts to "win power for the people democratically and nonviolently." He added that "the story of the Baku Commune he built provides an important perspective on the Russian Revolution and
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#17327874226862328-630: A huge crowd gathered in the yard of one of the Baku mosques and adopted a resolution demanding the release of the rifles confiscated by the Soviet from the crew of the Evelina . The Azerbaijani Bolshevik organization Hümmet attempted to mediate the dispute by proposing that the arms were taken from the Savage Division to be transferred to the custody of Hümmet. Shaumian agreed to this proposal. But on
2522-484: 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
2716-615: A leader of the Don Cossacks , started a rebellion. This was not the first uprising in the enstrangled relations between Russia and the cossacks, but it followed the same pattern; the rebellion spread across the south widely, and at its climax may have involved as many as 100,000 men, but was ill-organized and badly led. The rebellion was systematically suppressed by Russian troops pulled off the front; dissension spread among Bulavin's men, and he committed suicide in July 1708. The remainder of
2910-588: 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
3104-622: 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
3298-601: A new fleet in the Baltic, resembling his southern one & around that time in 1705 officially formed Russia's first marine unit . Charles XII elected his own candidate to the Polish throne in 1704, and spent the next three years chasing down Augustus II, now fleeing west towards his native Saxony . Charles XII met Peter's main army, dug in at Grodno , in early 1706. Unwilling to meet an elite force on foreign territory, Peter ordered his forces to retreat, but kept light forces in
3492-503: A plot, Peter fled Moscow. In the critical days that followed, the patriarch and many of the boyars and gentry rallied behind him. Most of the streltsy wavered and took no action, and Sophia was forced, peacefully, off the throne. Thus, in August 1689, he was acknowledged as the effective ruler of Russia. However, at the age of 17, he still had little interest in military manners, and passed on his rule to his mother, Natalya Naryshkina . It
3686-526: 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
3880-599: A reference to Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin . The founder and editor of several newspapers and journals, Shaumian is best known as the head of the Baku Commune , a short-lived committee appointed by Lenin in March 1918 with the task of leading the revolution in the Caucasus and West Asia . His tenure as leader of the Baku Commune was marred with numerous problems including ethnic violence between Baku's Armenian and Azerbaijani populations, attempting to defend
4074-403: A rout, with the panicked Russian troops attempting to swim over the frigid Narva River , many drowning in its freezing waters. The remainder of the Russian troops were mopped up with ease; only three groups, Peter's elite troops and one light infantry brigade, actually put up a reasonable fighting retreat, using supply wagons as improvised defenses. The Battle of Narva , as it came to be called,
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#17327874226864268-526: A small group of advisers to the tsar (of which Menshikov was a part), and her development of the two royal guard regiments. Catherine did not rule long, and died in 1727. Although she had two surviving daughters, Menshikov engineered the crowning of Peter's grandson, Peter II , as the new tsar. Peter II was not yet 12 years old, and Menshikov aggressively maneuvered to strengthen his position; he married Peter to his own daughter, brought him into his own household, and began to methodically weaken his opponents in
4462-530: A temporary lull in the Great Northern War thanks to Poltava, Peter was quick, indeed eager, to move south. He pulled many of his troops, as well as Sheremetev, his most reliable general, south across the whole length of Russia to fight this new war. This was not the first time that Russia had fought against the Ottomans, and it would not be the last; however, like in earlier wars, Peter underestimated
4656-471: A turning point when Britain decided to reverse its support for Bolsheviks. Shaumian's intransigence had cost him their support, MacDonell was told by a British officer: "the new policy of the British and French governments was to support the anti-Bolshevik forces....It mattered little whether they were Tsarist or Social Revolutionary." Over the previous days, numerous people had visited MacDonell, pleading for
4850-527: A withdrawal of British support for Shaumian. Many claimed to be former Tsarist officers offering their service to rise against the Bolsheviks, though MacDonell reportedly suspected them to have been agents working on behalf of the Bolsheviks. On 26 July 1918, the Bolsheviks were outvoted 259–236 in the Baku Soviet. Shaumian's support had eroded and many of his key supporters abandoned him. Angered with
5044-539: 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,
5238-481: 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
5432-401: 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
5626-610: 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
5820-488: 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
6014-624: 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
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6208-573: 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
6402-564: 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
6596-402: 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
6790-569: 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
6984-585: 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
7178-518: 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
7372-470: 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
7566-1000: 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
7760-468: The Battle of Fraustadt . Augustus II was forced off the throne and replaced with the less aggressive Stanisław Leszczyński , and Poland ended its alliance with Russia. The six year respite proved critical for Peter the Great. With characteristic energy, he quickly rebuilt his army. New officers were pulled out of the nobility in Russia and hired from abroad, and the replacement of soldiers lost at Narva
7954-798: The Caspian Sea with the other leaders of the Commune, known as the 26 Baku Commissars . He and the rest of the commissars were captured and executed by anti-Bolshevik forces on 20 September 1918. Stepan Gevorgi Shaumian was born to a family of Armenian cloth merchants in Tiflis (Tbilisi), then part of the Russian Empire . His family was descended from the Shaumian line of meliks (Armenian nobility) of Meghri ; one of his ancestors, also named Stepan Shahumian, took part in Davit Bek 's rebellion in
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8148-413: 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
8342-686: The Holy League 's war with Turkey . Under Ottoman power , Turkey controlled the area of the Crimean Tatars at the mouth of the Sea of Azov . The Turks and the Russian had been in on-and-off wars since 1568, vying to control the area around the Black Sea . Previous attempts to take the Crimea directly had failed, so Peter opted to lay siege to Turkish-controlled fortress of Azov at the mouth of
8536-570: The Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of
8730-762: The October Revolution (and dissolution of the Russian Empire) in 1917 is also sometimes called the Petrine era, in tribute to his importance. However, the Russian Empire proper was not founded until Peter took the title of imperator (emperor), at the end of the Great Northern War . Peter the Great was born on June 9, 1672, to Tsar Alexis I and his second wife Natalia Naryshkina . The tsar had more than 14 children between
8924-635: The Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as
9118-675: The Russian Revolution (1917) , which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union . Much of the related events involve the Imperial Russian Army , Imperial Russian Navy , and from the early twentieth century, the Imperial Russian Air Service . Historians have long marked the importance of Peter the Great 's reign in Russian history. Peter came of age in a vast but technologically and socially backward country. Upon taking control of Russia in 1682,
9312-532: 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
9506-721: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to
9700-622: The War of the Spanish Succession before traveling to Russia and fighting during Peter's campaigns as an engineer. As a German delegate independent from the Russian nobility, he appealed to Anna, an appeal that Münnich used to ascend to presidency of the War College in 1732. Münnich worked to develop a smaller, stronger military. He disbanded superfluous units and introduced numerous improvements in financial management, whilst continuing
9894-423: The campaign turned out to be a disaster; the 40,000 Russian troops, stymied by the enormous distances involved, were instead trapped on the river Prut by 130,000 Turkish troops. In the only major battle, the Russians successfully held the Ottomans, unaccustomed to concentrated Russian firepower, at bay, but the fight was indeed hopeless, as Peter was trapped and facing a superior Turkish force. The resultant treaty
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#173278742268610088-422: The flintlock into his army, and his troops were the first to use the bayonet , originally designed for defense, offensively. He also vastly improved and expanded his siege artillery , and later, introduced light artillery . His two elite guard units also functioned as ad hoc police units, having summary powers such as the ability to bring him a transgressive noble or official in chains. What Peter lacked most
10282-401: The general strike in Baku. The strike was crushed by Imperial Army and Shaumian was arrested and sent to prison. He escaped just as the February Revolution of 1917 was beginning. Following the October Revolution (which was centred in Saint Petersburg/Petrograd and Moscow , and thus had little effect on Baku), Shaumian was made Commissar Extraordinary for the Caucasus and Chairman of
10476-456: The river Don . He envisioned a two-part plan; first, acting as a diversion, a large cavalry force would move towards Turkish forts on the lower Dnieper . Meanwhile, a smaller infantry force moved down the Don river, laying siege to Azov in the summer of 1695. In a characteristic show of bravado Peter the Great arrived as an artilleryman. Russian forces first had to take a pair of watchtowers guarding heavy chains restricting Russian movements on
10670-435: The "Ashkhabad Committee", led by the Socialist Revolutionary Fyodor Funtikov , about what should be done with them. Three days later, the British Major-General Wilfrid Malleson , on hearing of their arrest, contacted Britain's liaison-officer in Ashgabat , Captain Reginald Teague-Jones , to suggest that the commissars be handed over to British forces in Meshed to be used as hostages in exchange for British citizens held by
10864-407: The 1720s. He became involved in revolutionary politics as a student in Tiflis. He graduated in 1898 and entered the Riga Polytechnic Institute , but left when his family ran into financial difficulties, and found work as a proofreader. In 1899, he formed Armenia's first Marxist group in the village of Jalaloghli (today the town of Stepanavan ). In 1900, he returned to Riga to resume his education at
11058-405: 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
11252-401: The 26 Commissars. The move caused an outcry in Armenia, as the Armenian public believed that the reburial was motivated by anti-Armenian sentiment . A scandal emerged when the Azerbaijani press reported that only 21 bodies were found buried in the park, as "Shaumian and four other Armenian commissars managed to escape their murderers". The claim was denied by Shaumian's granddaughter Tatiana ,
11446-433: The Baku Council of People's Commissars . The government of the Baku Commune consisted of an alliance of Bolsheviks, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries , Mensheviks and Dashnaks . In March 1918 the leaders of Baku Commune disarmed a group of Azerbaijani soldiers, who came to Baku from Lenkoran on the ship called Evelina to attend the funeral of Mamed Taghiyev, son of the millionaire Zeynalabdin Taghiyev . In response,
11640-412: 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
11834-409: The Great and developed from the Moscow ( Middle or Central Russian ) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution , the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However,
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#173278742268612028-459: The Great fully appreciated the importance of the battle's outcome, and made sure to thank the captured Swedes for their "lessons". However, the battle did not win the war, which was not yet even half over. The Ottomans had been apprehensive of Peter's militaristic gains, but had stayed out of the war. However, edged on by France and by Charles XII, the Ottomans, at the time harboring an exiled Charles XII, declared war on Peter by 1710. Now enjoying
12222-468: The Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent ( знак ударения ) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress . For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к ( zamók – "lock") – за́мок ( zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий ( stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий ( stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ ( chudnó – "this
12416-411: The Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada , Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers , after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese. Russian is one of the six official languages of
12610-415: The Muslims irrespective of their political affiliations or social and economic position. Estimates of the number of Azerbaijanis and other Muslims massacred in Baku and surrounding regions range between 3,000 and 12,000. The Committee of Revolutionary Defense issued another proclamation early in April 1918, which insisted on an anti-Soviet character of the rebellion and blamed Musavat and its leadership for
12804-647: The Ottomans now settled, Peter turned his attention back to the north, and to the dismantling of the Swedish Empire on the Baltic . He seized Viborg , Riga , and Reval in 1710. With Charles XII now deposed, the coalition against Sweden was formed again. Peter divided his army between assisting his allies in the south Baltic, and his own attacks in the east. What is now Estonia and Livonia , weakly defended, fell quickly. Peter then moved north and invaded Finland in 1713. Meanwhile, Charles, traveling incognito, returned to Sweden in 1714. The Swedes, with their empire broken and nothing left to lose, continued to fight. At sea,
12998-423: The Polytechnic Institute and joined the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDLP). In 1902, he was expelled from the institute, arrested, and exiled back to Transcaucasia . In spring 1902, Shaumyan enrolled in the philosophy department of Humboldt University of Berlin , from which he graduated in 1905. In Europe, he met with such exiles from the Russian Empire as Lenin , Julius Martov and Georgi Plekhanov , and
13192-409: The Privy Council. In the end, Menshikov overreached; his bold grabs at power alarmed the Russian nobility, and Peter, increasingly disliking Menshikov, allied himself with Prince Ivan Dolgorukov instead. Menshikov was exiled to Siberia, where he died in 1729. Peter II himself died in 1730, succumbing to smallpox , again leaving no heir. The short reigns of both Catherine and Peter II were marked by
13386-426: The Russian Revolution. Shaumian's close relationship with Lenin also exacerbated the already heightened tensions between the British and the Soviets, who placed much of the blame on the British in complicity in the massacre. Anastas Mikoyan was especially active in working to preserve the memory of Shaumian, who he regarded as "his hero and revolutionary mentor." As American journalist Harrison Salisbury wrote: During
13580-807: 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
13774-450: The Russian empire, including serfs, foreigners, clergymen, and foreign specialists along with the usual boyars. Thus his administration consisted of men from across the social gamut. Most prominent among them was a one Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov , a childhood friend from Peter's days with the mock troops. Menshikov was a former stableboy of the lowest rank, and would later rise up and become Peter's most able administrator. As corrupt as he
13968-542: The Russian government due to her time in Courland , and intense distrust towards the Russian nobility that had tried to slight her once already. Therefore, she staffed her rule mostly with foreigners, especially Baltic Germans, led by her deeply unpopular favorite Ernst Johann von Biron . She often elected favorites to important positions, regardless of their actual experience, and thus corruption ran rampart as many tried to accumulate personal wealth and influence. Nonetheless,
14162-458: 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
14356-404: The Russians, but was confident that his 25,000 veteran troops, despite dwindling numbers, lack of supplies, and exhaustion, could defeat the 40,000 Russians in battle and finally end the war with Swedish victory. Peter, meanwhile, could afford to be patient; the Swedes were marooned far from support or reinforcements, and were losing numbers every day. The most direct path between the Russian camp to
14550-458: 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
14744-841: The Soviet period, Khankendi in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the Azerbaijan SSR was renamed as Stepanakert, after Shaumian. The city of Jalaloghli in the Armenian SSR was also renamed, in Shaumian's honor, Stepanavan, a name it has retained in post-Soviet Armenia. Streets in Lipetsk , Yekaterinburg , Stavropol and Rostov-on-Don ( Russia ), an avenue in Saint Petersburg are named in Shaumian's honour. A statue of him erected in 1931 stands in Yerevan ,
14938-600: The Soviets. That same day, Teague-Jones attended the committee's meeting in Ashgabat, which had the task of deciding the fate of the Commissars. For some reason Teague-Jones did not communicate Malleson's request to the committee, and later claimed he left before a decision was made and did not discover until the following day that the committee had eventually decided to issue orders that the commissars should be executed. On
15132-534: The Swedes and Peter's "window to the west", the fortress would later grow into one of Russia's largest and most important population centers, and under Peter, Russia's capital. Sheremetev's success continued into 1704. The major inland city of Dorpat fell in July 1704, its walls breached by Peter's new artillery. This artillery then went on to play a pivotal role in the second Battle of Narva . This time, with heavier numbers, and Charles XII far away in Poland, Peter
15326-671: The Swedes were forced to burn their supplies, bury their cannons, and make a rush for Charles's main army; out of 12,000 men, only 6,000, and virtually none of the supplies, actually made it to Charles. With more men and no supplies, this only compounded Charles's food problems. The thought-of Cossack reinforcements proved to be illusory as well; although Mazepa defected to the Swedes, he only brought 3,000 troops with him. As retribution, Menshikov sacked and razed Baturyn , slaughtering upwards of 6,000 men, women, and children and completely destroying Mazepa's capital. No one else dared defect, and Ukraine remained firmly under Peter's control. Charles
15520-535: The Swedish empire a tantalizing target for partition by its neighbors. Following the successful Azov campaign, Peter was still negotiating a peace treaty with the Turks, but even so he was negotiating a coalition with Augustus II of Poland and with the Frederick IV of Denmark . Peter began a round of conscription to fill out his ranks in late 1699, and a start date for the war was agreed upon in early 1700. The plan
15714-477: The Table organized the four major governmental branches, the army, navy, civil service, and court, into 14 major ranks. This standardized government positions and allowed officers to accurately gauge their relative importance; there was no table for common men. The Table was Peter's way of handling the appointment of nobility, as well as organizing Russian military positions; Peter had not appointed any new boyars , and
15908-467: 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
16102-523: The afternoon of 31 March, when Muslim representatives appeared before the Baku Soviet leadership to take the arms, shots were already heard in the city and the Soviet commissar Prokofy Dzhaparidze refused to provide arms and informed the Hümmet leadership that "Musavat had launched a political war". While it was not established who fired the first shot, the Baku Commune leaders accused the Muslims of starting
16296-462: The area to harass the Swedes whenever possible. Part of the retreating column, led by Menshikov , met a smaller Swedish detachment at Kalisz , and in the ensuing battle defeated it soundly. However, by 1707, Charles had finally chased down and deposed King Augustus, ending his Polish detour and bringing his attention squarely back to Russia. With only 50,000 soldiers, Charles XII could not dream of conquering all of Russia. Instead, he reasoned that
16490-539: The army for life. Peter established new schools and training grounds for the officer elite that was to lead the Russian army, and dispatched large numbers of men abroad to learn under foreign masters. Finding promises of release from serfdom insufficient, Peter began drafting soldiers, starting with a levy calling for 1 man for every 50 households. This levy was repeated an incredible 53 times, drawing 300,000 new soldiers into his army. He grew increasingly adept at pulling manpower out of every available resource, including
16684-452: The attack, Charles XII was shot in the foot. Thus, once the charge was made on the morning of 8 July 1709 ( N. S. ), he was leading the battle off of a litter . To Peter's satisfaction, the Swedes moved in exactly the way that he had anticipated. Charles was well aware of the redoubts that Peter had dug, and had reasoned that, to avoid being bogged down and losing the element of surprise, he would rush past them as quickly as he could, and accept
16878-476: The besieged city in November. The Russians, enjoying a 3 to 1 numerical advantage, expected Charles XII to wait for reinforcements before attacking; but in another daring move, the Swedish forces, under cover of a blizzard, opted instead for a surprise attack on the Russian line. Caught off-guard, thinly stretched, and vulnerable to penetration by the skilled Swedish army, the ensuing battle quickly turned into
17072-403: 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
17266-487: The broken Russian enemy; had he chosen to pursue Peter, he might vary well have forced a quick victory and changed the outcome of the war. Regardless, after breaking a Saxony siege on Riga in the summer of 1701, Charles crossed into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . Although the Polish resisted for 6 years, they were finally forced out of the war following Swedish victory, again at impossible odds, at
17460-406: The capital of Armenia. Shaumian was also regularly praised by Party leaders in the Caucasus. In 1978, Soviet Azerbaijan's First Secretary Heydar Aliyev remarked: Since the Soviet dissolution , Shaumian's legacy has been affected by the impact of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict . In January 2009, Azerbaijan's post-Soviet authorities demolished the 26 Commissars Memorial in Baku, which commemorated
17654-441: The city against an advancing Turkish army, all the while attempting to spread the cause of the revolution throughout the region. Unlike many of the other Bolsheviks at the time, he preferred to resolve many of the conflicts he faced peacefully rather than with force and terror . Shaumian was known by various aliases, including "Suren", "Surenin" and “Ayaks". After the Baku Commune was voted out of power in July 1918, he fled across
17848-529: The city of Narva on the banks of the Narva River , just south of the Gulf of Finland . Peter organized the siege works, but left soon after to organize reinforcements for Charles's eventual relief effort (and thus, as it would turn out, taking himself out of harm's way). Choosing between Poland and Russia, Charles XII thought Russia to be the more dangerous threat, and led a small army of around 11,000 men into
18042-424: The clergy and enemy deserters . The resultant Russian army was thus heavily Russian; the army was vastly more nationalistic then its European counterparts, which relied heavily on mercenaries. Peter stressed evolution away from the streltsy and gentry cavalry, although he never discarded it entirely. He introduced a European dress code complete with knee-breeches , tricornes , and long coats . He introduced
18236-597: The conflict but was merely interested in helping him defend the city. Unconvinced, Shaumian replied, "And you really believe that a British general and a Bolshevik commissar would make good partners....No! We will organise our own force to fight the Turk." Shaumian was under the impression that the Bolsheviks would soon be sending reinforcements from the Caspian Sea to assist him, although that prospect remained highly unlikely. He had sent numerous telegrams to Moscow extolling
18430-462: The confusion as Baku fell to Turkish forces, Shaumian and his fellow commissars either escaped or were released. In the most widely accepted version of events a group of Bolsheviks headed by Anastas Mikoyan broke into the prison and released Shaumian. He and the other commissars then boarded a ship to Krasnovodsk , where upon arrival he was promptly arrested by anti-Bolshevik elements led by their commandant, Kuhn. Kuhn then requested further orders from
18624-417: The consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate
18818-408: The core of the Russian nobility, and became training grounds for young nobles, who served as rank-and-file soldiers to learn military life before becoming officers elsewhere. As Peter grew older, Sophia realized the insecurity of her throne in the face of a fledging male heir. In 1689, she incited her supporters in the streltsy to rebel again and put her firmly in power again. Frightened by rumors of
19012-572: 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
19206-548: The destructive influence of the nobility and foreign influence. The rebellion was bloodily suppressed in March 1707. Similarly, 1705 also marked the rebellion of the Turkish Bashkirs , for parallel reasons; this rebellion was not put down until 1711. More serious was the Bulavin Rebellion in 1707. Opposed to the government position regarding fugitives and influenced by anti foreignism, Konrad Bulavin ,
19400-506: The distances involved and the stress of having to fight two wars simultaneously. Peter was the first to actively encourage Wallachia and Moldavia , mostly Christian areas under Turkish control, to revolt against their Ottoman rulers. By spring 1711 Peter was ready. He moved his army from Kyiv down through Poland, skirting wide of the Black Sea , before crossing the Dnester into Moldavia, aiming to sever it from Turkish rule. In reality,
19594-439: The element of surprise he had hoped for earlier. With Peter now aware of Charles's movements, the plan quickly went awry; many of the Swedish forces got caught up fighting the redoubts anyway, and the smoke from fire on both sides, and the din from the engagements between the Russian and Swedish cavalry ahead of the main force, prevented him from effectively organizing his army. Charles pulled his forces west to reorganize back into
19788-418: The events. The Soviet's statement asserted that there was a carefully laid out plot by Musavat to overthrow the Baku Soviet and to establish its own regime: The enemies of Soviet power in the city of Baku have raised their head. The malice and hatred with which they viewed the revolutionary organ of the workers and soldiers began recently to overflow into open counterrevolutionary activities. The appearance of
19982-449: The fact that the counterrevolutionary Musavat party declared war on the Soviet of Workers', Soldiers', and Sailors' Deputies in the city of Baku and thus threatened the existence of the government of the revolutionary democracy, Baku is declared to be in a state of siege. Bolsheviks had only about 6,000 loyal troops, and they were forced to seek support from either Muslim Musavat or Armenian Dashnaktsutyun. Shaumian, himself an Armenian, chose
20176-413: 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,
20370-413: The fighting abilities of his Armenian units but warned that they too, would soon be unable to halt the advance of Enver's army. With this, MacDonell's and Shaumian's conversation ended with the possibility of accepting British aid in exchange for complete Bolshevik control over the military force, terms the British could not immediately accept. Relations between the Baku Commune and the British soon reached
20564-456: 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
20758-590: The first significant ones in the Russian campaign, helped boost Russian morale after the catastrophe at Narva. Peter then sent Sheremetev to Ingria, where he mopped up Swedish forces on the Lake Ladoga isthmus . October 1702 marked the taking of the Swedish fort of Nöteborg . In May 1703, Peter captured Nyenschantz fortress. He chose a spot at the mouth of the Neva , surrounded by marshes, to establish his fortress of Saint Petersburg . Originally an outpost against
20952-523: The first two colleges created were the College of War , which controlled the army and was led by Menshikov, and the Admiralty Board , which controlled the navy and was led by admiral Fyodor Apraksin . The sudden rise of Russia to power, and its protracted success in the war, triggered waves of concern across Europe. To help quell these waves, Peter traveled to Paris in 1717. Although his trip
21146-452: The foreign office, under Andrey Osterman , and the army, under Burkhard Christoph von Münnich , benefited greatly from foreign influence; it serves to note that both men had previously served under Peter the Great. The palace guards had helped her ascend to the throne, but all the same, Anna created a third Izmaylovsky regiment to balance out their power. Münnich, a tireless and power-hungry figure, had accumulated experience fighting in
21340-692: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to
21534-480: 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
21728-562: The government. In short, the Privy Council was aiming to gut the power of the tsar and make the Russian Empire a de facto oligarchy . However, the plan did not come to fruition; the Russian nobility was terrified by the prospects of such a shift in power, as were the palace guard regiments, and with their collective force Anna was able to tear up the restrictions placed on her and dissolve the Council for good. Anna had few friends in
21922-458: The great wartime pressure that Peter had placed on his country, coupled with the discontent of the boyar nobility, would hand him the victory he desired. Charles had a strong base for this decision, for Peter's heavy-handed taxation had raised discontent against the crown. In the summer of 1705, an unknown monk and a member of the streltsy started a rebellion in Astrakhan against what they saw as
22116-752: The hostilities, and with the support of Dashnak forces attacked the Muslim quarters: We needed to give a rebuff, and we exploited the opportunity of the first attempt at an armed assault on our cavalry unit and began an attack on the whole front. Due to the efforts of both the local Soviet and the Military-revolutionary committee of the Caucasus Army, which moved here (from Tiflis and Sarikamish) we already had armed forces – about 6,000 strong. Dashnaktsutiun also had 3,000–4,000 of national forces, which were at our disposal. The participation of
22310-529: The involvement of British forces, which the latter two welcomed. In either case, Shaumian was under direct orders from Moscow to refuse aid offered by the British. However, he understood the consequences of not accepting British aid, including a further massacre of Armenians by the Turks. Major Ranald MacDonell, a seasoned diplomat and the British vice-consul of Baku, was tasked by his superiors to persuade Shaumian to reconsider British support. In mid-summer, MacDonell personally visited Shaumian's home in Baku and
22504-812: The islands of Usedom and Wollin in return for money. Before the end of the Great Northern War , the Treaty of Fredriksborg was signed between Sweden and Denmark for Sweden to give up her exception from paying taxes to use the military service, the Sound. She also gave up Holstein-Gottorp. Finally, proceeding the War, in August and September 1721, the Treaty of Nyastad was signed between Sweden and Russia. Sweden ceded Livonia, Estonia and Ingria while Russia returned Finland, excluding Kexholm and parts of Karelia. Domestically, Peter contributed one last major element to Russia before his death in 1725: his Table of Ranks . Introduced in 1722,
22698-531: The issue by demonstrating in Catherine's support. The opposition collapsed, and Catherine I was named the new tsar. The two palace guard regiments would decide many such political issues in the future, resembling the old streltsy in this regard. Catherine left most of the work of ruling to her close adviser Menshikov. Her most important contribution was the formation of the Supreme Privy Council ,
22892-431: The land he captured, save Saint Peterburg and Neva, Charles would not settle for anything less than Swedish victory. Ukraine , fertile and as yet untouched by the war, lay to the south; he also knew that Cossack hetman Ivan Mazepa , who largely controlled Ukraine under Peter, was secretly scheming against his tsar. Thus, the Swedes turned south, and entered Ukraine instead. Historians still argue over whether or not
23086-459: The latter lent the civil war, to some extent, the character of an ethnic massacre, however, it was impossible to avoid this. We were going for it deliberately. The Muslim poor suffered severely, however they are now rallying around the Bolsheviks and the Soviet. On the morning of 1 April 1918, the Committee of Revolutionary Defense of the Baku Soviet issued a leaflet with the message: In view of
23280-643: The latter. Shaumian considered the March events to be a triumph of the Soviet power in the Caucasus: According to Firuz Kazemzadeh , the Baku Soviet provoked the March events to eliminate its most formidable rival: the Musavat. However, when Soviet leaders reached out to ARF for assistance against the Azerbaijani nationalists, the conflict degenerated into a massacre with the Armenians killing
23474-404: The matter did not involve the British, they should not concern themselves with the issue. The telegram that was sent told the authorities holding the commissars to dispose of them "as they sought fit." Nevertheless, Malleson expressed his horror when he learned upon the ultimate fate that had befallen the commissars. Following Shaumian's death, the Soviet government depicted him as a fallen hero of
23668-405: The money went into the Russian metalworking industry, vastly improving the quantity and quality of the industry, and through it the quality of the Russian weaponry. Because of the large distances involved in the northern war, Peter also built up a large contingent of cavalry . Peter tempered this new army in attacks on the Swedish holdings of Livonia and Ingria on the Baltic shore. Once he
23862-409: The most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on
24056-459: The next before Persia finally sued for peace. In November 1719, the Treaty of Stockholm was made between Sweden and Hanover. Sweden handed over Bremen and Verden to Holstein in return for financial and naval support. The Elector of Hanover was George I. Later, in January and February 1720, another Treaty of Stockholm was signed between Sweden and Brandenburg. Sweden ceded Stettin, South Pomerania,
24250-544: The night of 20 September, Shaumian and the others were executed by a firing squad in a remote location between the stations of Pereval and Akhcha-Kuyma on the Trans-Caspian railway . In 1956, the Observer published a letter written by a British staff officer who recounted a conversation he had had with Malleson, stricken with malaria at the time, on what was to be done to the commissars. Malleson replied that since
24444-404: The north and Poltava was through treacherous forest and marsh, and thus Peter foresaw that any Swedish attack would double around the left, heading west before turning north through open ground towards the Russian army. Peter built six earthen redoubts in a line facing this probable Swedish charge, later augmenting them with four more, extending south in a "T". In late June, while preparing for
24638-524: 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
24832-459: The officer corps; commoners who distinguished themselves could achieve officer rank as well. Peter believed in lifelong servitude to the state, whether it was growing crops or fighting wars. Thus he offered serfs escape from their lifelong servitude on the farm in return for lifelong servitude in the army. Older and disabled veterans were transferred to positions in administration and the reserves, and thus, once they joined, Peter's troops were bound to
25026-434: The old honor code of mestnichestvo , which placed more stress on hereditary origins then on actual skill, had been rightfully abolished in 1682. He had resorted to the ad-hoc appointment before, but by the time of the Great Northern War this was quickly proving tedious, necessitating the change. Those that reached a certain level on the table were granted personal nobility , and for those that reached rank 12 or 8, depending on
25220-595: The old. The epoch of Russian history that Peter created has been variously known as the Imperial Age, because of the new connection between the ruler and land; the St. Petersburg Era, as the capital was moved to the newly built Saint Petersburg during his reign; and the All-Russian Period, which stresses the greater hegemony founded in the previously xenophobic country. The period from the time of his rule to
25414-515: 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
25608-461: 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,
25802-419: The outcome of the vote, he announced that his party would withdraw from the Soviet and Baku itself: "With pain in our hearts and curses on our lips, we who had come here to die for the Soviet regime are forced to leave." A new government headed primarily by Russians, known as Central Caspian Dictatorship ( Diktatura Tsentrokaspiya ) was formed, as British forces under General Lionel Dunsterville occupied Baku
25996-639: The outrageous behavior of the Savage Division on the steamship Evelina in shooting comrades—all this speaks of the criminal plans of the counterrevolutionaries grouped mainly around the Bek party Musavat and having as its goal the overthrow of Soviet power." Less than six months later, in September 1918, Nuri Pasha 's Ottoman -led Army of Islam , supported by Azerbaijani forces, recaptured Baku and subsequently killed an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 ethnic Armenians. The Bolsheviks clashed with Dashnaks and Mensheviks over
26190-446: 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
26384-453: 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
26578-459: 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
26772-418: 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
26966-471: The prebuilt Russian fleet, which had proved useless when victory was still uncertain, was proving its worth at consolidating Russian victories; victories at Gangut in 1714, Ösel in 1719, and Grengam in 1720 gave Peter control of the sea. Even while he was dismantling the Swedish Empire, Peter continued to reform and refine his army. Russia's administration system at the time, the prikazy ,
27160-479: 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
27354-472: 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 ,
27548-524: The rebellion was mopped up by 1709. Regardless, by the summer of 1708, Charles was positioned in Lithuania , facing a road directly towards Moscow. However, he faced a desolate tundra, deliberately laid bare by Russian forces and protected by the significant fortress of Smolensk . His troops were constantly being harassed by Russian light troops, and reinforcements were still en route. Diplomatically, although Peter offered deals that would return all of
27742-526: The reforms of his predecessors. The army dissolved annually during harvest seasons, and the only regular forces in the Russian army were the streltsy , a formally elite unit that had, by Peter's time, become a hereditary, ill-trained, ill-equipped force that garrisoned in Moscow and played more of a role in politics then in actual fighting. Peter started by firmly placing the nobility into the officer corps. Drawing on his personal experiences, he made young nobles serve as rank-and-file soldiers before ascending to
27936-491: 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
28130-513: The rest were captured on the banks of the Dnieper by Menshikov. Only a few hundred, including Charles himself, escaped south to Turkish exile. The Battle of Poltava was one of the most decisive victory in Russian history. The result of the Battle of Poltava, and of the following surrender, was that the bulk of the Swedish army was simply annihilated, leaving Sweden wide open for attack. At home,
28324-419: The resulting losses, even leaving the bulk of his artillery behind to speed his movement. However, Charles was not aware of the additional four pieces of earthwork that Peter had dug on the eve of battle; to surmount this new problem, Charles spent valuable time rearranging his troops from firing lines , superb for volley fire , to faster-moving but less fire-ready columns , a time-consuming move that lost him
28518-512: The same day. On 31 July 1918, the 26 Baku Commissars attempted the evacuation of Bolshevik armed troops by sailing over the Caspian Sea to Astrakhan , but the ships were captured on 16 August by the military vessels of the Central Caspian Dictatorship . The Commissars were arrested and placed in Baku prison. On 28 August, Shaumian and his comrades were elected in absentia to the Baku Soviet. On 14 September, amidst
28712-416: The same time, he could be cruel, not flinching from the application of force to put down rebellions and sometimes beating his own friends if he thought it necessary. Once he took over the governmental machinery, Peter found a distinct lack of skilled specialists with which to run his government. Never placing much importance in rank or origin, Peter began recruiting skilled specialists out of every corner of
28906-464: The service, hereditary nobility was granted, thus both rewarding merit and satisfying Peter's nobility. The Table, with minor changes, continued to find use until it was finally abolished in 1917. Peter's death left no clear candidate for succession to the throne. His son, Aleksei , was a shy, bookish man with little interest in the throne, as well as a constant target for revolts aimed at undermining Peter's rule. Alexei had renounced his interest in
29100-516: The significant Bolshevik movement in the city. Joseph Stalin , then known as 'Koba' was also based in Baku. They clashed. Shaumian was arrested on May Day, 1909, but was released after his employer interceded on his behalf, and accused 'Koba' of being a police agent, as the only person who had known the address of the safe house where he had been hiding. This accusation against Stalin was never proved, and Shaumian apparently accepted his denials, because they continued to collaborate. In 1914, Shaumian led
29294-619: The six-foot eight tsar was literally heads and shoulders above others, although his disguise spared him having to partake in court formalities. He traveled through Sweden , Austria , the Netherlands , Prussia , England , and the Habsburg Empire , enlisting himself as a workman in many different docks and factories across the continent. For 18 months, Peter ingested everything he could about European craftsmanship, especially navigation, as well as European society in general. His trip
29488-420: The slow degradation of the Russian army and navy. Peter's draconian taxes were reduced, military units disbanded, and the navy was left to rot at anchor. The army would again be strengthened for various small actions in the 1730s and 1740s, but the declining trend of the Russian navy was not reversed for centuries. The next leading candidate to the throne, as chosen by the Privy Council, was Anna Ivanovna , who
29682-529: The sons of nobles and servitors, and staged mock battles. As he grew older, these battles became more and more elaborate, including organized units, formations, and even live ammunition. Once they became adults, the boys with whom Peter staged the fights would become his commanders and closest military advisers, eventually forming the core of Russia's first two elite guard units , the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky regiments . These two regiments contained
29876-636: The south. In 1722, Peter allied with Georgia and Armenia , looking to seize land at the expense of the declining Safavid Persia and deny it to the Ottomans. Upon declaring war, Peter ordered the construction of the Caspian Flotilla and sailed down the Volga to command a joint land-sea campaign that took the city of Derbent , before being forced to return to Astrakhan for supplies. The Russian forces fought on, facing little resistance, without Peter's involvement, taking Resht late that year and Baku
30070-741: The staff of the Savage Division, headed by the unmasked Talyshkhanov, the events in Lenkoran, in Mugan, and at Shemakha, the capture of Petrovsk by the Daghestan regiment and the withholding of grain shipments from Baku, the threats of Elisavetpol, and in the last few days of Tiflis, to march on Baku, against soviet power, the aggressive movements of the armored train of the Transcaucasian Commissariat in Adzhikabul , and, finally,
30264-428: The streltsy, and forced her to become a nun as well. Although Peter's "grand coalition" against the Turks had failed to develop, new political developments quickly brought his military attention to the north. 1697 marked the death of Charles XI , king of Sweden . He left his throne to his 15-year-old son, Charles XII . The king's youth and inexperience, coupled with his holdings of several major Baltic ports , made
30458-458: The streltsy, torturing many into revealing that they sympathized with his half-sister and former tsarina Sophia. Thousands of streltsy were executed and hung in public, and Sophia, who had been exiled to a monastery near Moscow, was now forced to become a nun. Peter had the bodies of hundreds of streltsy hung outside her window to remind her of the consequences of confronting him. He also ended his marriage with Eudoxia Lopukhina , who sympathized with
30652-585: The subsequent civil war." Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of
30846-405: The suburbs of Stockholm , the Swedes finally admitted ultimate defeat. In the resultant Treaty of Nystad , Peter was extremely lenient with the Swedes, keeping Estonia, Livonia, Ingria, and part of southern Finland (especially Saint Petersburg) in exchange for the return of most of Finland to the Swedes and the payment of 2 million silver riksdaler . Peter could afford to be lenient, as the war
31040-626: 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
31234-459: 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
31428-699: The throne and killed many of the leading members of the Naryshkin family, the murders of whom Peter witnessed. In the aftermath, Ivan was proclaimed the senior tsar, and Peter the junior tsar, and Sophia the regent. In reality, Sophia took absolute power as an autocrat , shoving her half-brothers away from power. As a child, Peter, though intelligent , was neither an intellectual nor particularly refined. Physically able and possessing manic levels of energy, he turned his attention towards working with his hands. In particular, Peter found interest in seamanship and in military manners. He formed mock troops with his friends,
31622-402: The throne and making her a leading candidate, alongside Peter's grandson Peter Alekseyevich . Peter, a child at the time, was backed by the old nobility, while Catherine found support in the newer class, especially Menshikov. The Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky guard regiments, which had associated with Catherine during her trips alongside her husband during his later military campaigns, decided
31816-408: The throne in 1714, an action that made Peter furious; Aleksei was captured and tortured, and died of his injuries in 1718. None of Peter's other male children survived into adulthood. In addition, in 1722 he had declared that the naming of an heir was the tsar's choice, not a matter of genealogy . Peter had crowned his second wife, Catherine , empress of Russia in 1724, strengthening her claim to
32010-563: The time Peter became involved, the coalition was already falling apart. Charles XII proved to be an unprecedented military genius and far superior a commander then his foes had expected. With utmost daring, in July 1700 Charles crossed the straits to Denmark with 15,000 men, carrying the fighting into the heart of their territory; the Danes, utterly defeated, surrendered within a month. Unaware of this, Peter declared war on Sweden in August 1700. Peter led an army of 35,000 men, and quickly laid siege to
32204-402: The tsar energetically redressed every aspect of Russian government, society, and military to more closely match its western neighbors. He fought expansive wars against his neighbors, squeezing every resource at his disposal to power his war machine, and send large numbers of young men west, to learn the trades and skills that Russia would need in the future. Peter founded a new Russia by shattering
32398-414: The two discussed the issue of British military involvement in a generally amiable conversation. Shaumian first raised the spectre of what British involvement would entail: "Is your General Dunsterville [the head of the military force awaiting orders to enter Baku] coming to Baku to turn us out?" MacDonell reassured him that Dunsterville, being a member of the military, was not claiming any political stake in
32592-443: The two marriages, but only three of the males, Feodor and Ivan by his first marriage and Peter by his second, survived into adulthood. Peter was considerably more healthy then his half-brothers, both of which had serious physical disabilities . Peter's father died in 1676, and Feodor, the late ruler's oldest son, was proclaimed tsar. When Feodor, in turn, died in 1682, he left no heir to the throne. With no clear path for succession,
32786-566: The two most prominent boyar families, the Naryshkins and the Miloslavsky , backed different heirs in a competition for the throne. The Naryshkins, backing Peter, won an early victory, and Peter was proclaimed tsar in April 1682, with his mother as the acting regent . However, in May, Peter's able-bodied half-sister Sophia , leading a Miloslavsky-backed rebellion by the streltsy , overtook
32980-786: 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
33174-511: 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
33368-415: The value of a sea-borne fleet. Although his predecessors had built primitive fleets on an as-needed basis, the second siege of Azov was their first successful application. Thus, with a need for shipbuilding knowledge and a desire to develop a mighty coalition against the Turks, Peter organized a 250-man expedition for Europe in March 1697. Although Peter traveled incognito as Peter Mikhailov he fooled no one;
33562-407: The veteran troops outfought the Russians, collapsing them back and seizing supporting cannon as well. However, the weight of massed Russian fire opened a hole in the middle of the Swedish line, and the Russians, now fully able to make full use of such an event, poured through it and broke the Swedish column in half. The Swedish line broke and scattered, and 10,000 Swedes were killed or captured; most of
33756-427: The victory gave Peter the political capital, and the war lull, he needed to crush ongoing domestic issues; in fact, if Peter had lost the battle, opposition to the tsar's reforms could have become active support for a new tsar. Poltava demonstrates how far the Russian army had come; after all, just nine years earlier, the Russians had been almost destroyed fighting the Swedes with an even greater numerical advantage. Peter
33950-431: The water, during which a successful sortie was launched by the Turks that captured many of the Russian siege engines . The Russians accepted the losses and laid down a steady bombardment onto the fort. However, the fort was constantly receiving supplies by water, and the attrition was hurting Peter's forces more than the Turks. After three months, Peter was forced to withdraw. Although his first attack on Azov proved to be
34144-546: Was a crushing defeat for Peter's young army, with the vast majority of the Russian forces destroyed and nearly all of its siege equipment captured. The Swedes suffered only 700 casualties, while more than 6,000 Russian troops were killed and another 20,000 captured. Following the battle, with the Russian army broken, Charles XII reasoned that the Russians were no longer a threat to him and turned south to deal with Poland instead of pursuing Russia. Historians still argue as to whether or not Charles should have pressed his pursuit of
34338-614: Was a decisive shift in the European balance of power . The Swedish Empire was carved up, and its position as a great power was taken by Russia. Celebrating these victories, Peter took the title of imperator , and the Russian Empire was thus founded. The Northern War left Russia as the dominant power in Northern Europe , and gave it firm control over the Baltic and thus a "window to the west". The war had also bettered Russia's position with respect to its Polish rival, which came to
34532-401: Was able to take the city, albeit with heavy casualties. The commander in the city violated the ideal of an honorable surrender by refused to give in, and once the Russians breached the city, the remaining Swedish forces were massacred. Overall, the many Swedish losses on the home front put a large dent in the Swedish economy, already strained by the effects of the war. Peter also rapidly assembled
34726-425: Was accomplished through heavy-handed conscription . Peter scraped money to finance his new campaign out of every hole he could find, raising taxes, creating new ones, monopolizing the salt trade , and debasing the currency , anything he could do to raise more cash. Most notoriously, he introduced a tax on beards , and forced churches to melt their bells to make cannons. As new soldiers needed new weapons, much of
34920-501: Was an antiquated, jumbled form of governance, with overlapping jurisdictions and lacking separation of powers . In 1717 he began replacing these instead with collegias , or "colleges", based on the Swedish model. As a rule Peter employed equal parts native Russians and foreign servitors. Unlike the prikazy they replaced, colleges could not make a decision without a consensus of their members, so-called "governance by board" that helped stifle wayward decisions as well as corruption. Among
35114-428: Was energetic, Menshikov could be found in every part of the Russian governmental machinery, was under constant surveillance by the Russian court, and often met Peter's cudgel, all the while somehow maintaining his prominent position. With the head of the Russian governance now firmly in place, Peter began a sweeping modernization of his army. Peter inherited a partially Westernized military, and he sought to consolidate
35308-405: 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
35502-421: 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
35696-425: Was inconclusive—France only promised to avoid involvement—once again, it gave Peter an opportunity to study Western Europe. In late 1718, Charles XII himself was shot through the head in a minor battle, possibly by his own soldiers. A broken Sweden sought allies against the Russian juggernaut, but the search proved fruitless, and with Russian troops regularly crossing the Baltic and raiding mainland Sweden, even reaching
35890-407: Was not until her death in 1694 that Peter finally assumed control of the state. Peter personally studied soldiers and sailors from the bottom up, serving in the rank and file before promoting himself into the officer corps. Thus, Peter did not become a full general until after his victory at Poltava in 1709, and did not become full admiral until the conclusion of the Great Northern War more than
36084-651: Was present at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP , in London, at which the party split into factions, and Shaumyan sided with Bolsheviks . Shaumyan returned to Tiflis in 1904, obtained a job as a teacher, while working illicitly as a Bolshevik organiser. of the Bolshand became a teacher, and the leader of local Social Democrats in Tiflis, as well as a prolific writer of Marxist literature. By 1907 he had moved to Baku to head up
36278-424: Was running out of both time and options. Winter 1708–09 was a miserable one for the Swedes encamped in Ukraine, and in the following spring Charles was bogged down in a siege of the small Russian fortress of Poltava . Peter, still wary of engaging the Swedes in a pitched battle, slowly moved his troops through fortified positions to relieve the small fort. Charles foresaw that he could not take Poltava in time to avoid
36472-410: Was specialization; he relied on irregular forces such as Cossacks and nomads for the light cavalry roles of scouting , skirmishing , and raiding , as his proper cavalry were exclusively dragoons , which rode on horseback but dismounted in battle and fought on foot. In 1695, Peter conducted his first major operation with his fledgling military. Having assumed control in 1694, Peter inherited
36666-434: Was stopped short of a planned passage through Italy by news of a streltsy rebellion at home, and Peter rushed back to Russia in 1698, along with 750 foreigners he had recruited for Russian industry. The hoped-for political gains of the embassy turned out to be dubious at best, but the military gains were enormous. Peter returned to Moscow to find that the rebellion had already been dealt with. He proceeded to interrogate
36860-457: Was sure that Charles was heading south, he ordered his field marshal , Boris Sheremetev , to attack the lightly defended colonies, whilst also sending a division south, to delay Charles XII and give Peter time to finish mending his forces. At the end of 1701, Sheremetev met a vastly outnumbered Swedish force on the field at Erastfer in Livonia, soundly defeating them; he repeated the feat again at Hummelshof in July 1702. These two victories,
37054-401: Was surprisingly lenient considering that the Russian force was facing annihilation; Peter lost Azov, was forced to abandon his southern fleet, promised not to meddle with Polish affairs, and guaranteed safe passage to Sweden for Charles XII. In return, Peter was able to extricate himself from the situation, and continued to hold a dominant position in the Great Northern War. With the issue with
37248-406: Was the daughter of Peter's late brother Ivan V . The primary reason for their choice was her political weakness as a woman and widow, something that the Council moved aggressively to take advantage of; they declared that they would approve her crowning only if she gave up the power to make and amend taxes, declare war, control the army, grant and revoke estates, and appoint people to high positions in
37442-402: 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
37636-502: Was to have Poland move on southern Livonia and the Danes attack Swedish allies in Schleswig-Holstein . However, Peter's negotiations with the Turks took him longer than he expected, and so in January 1700 Augustus II declared war on Sweden, followed within a few months by the Danes, with Russia standing on the sidelines. It was not until July of that year that the Treaty of Constantinople was finally signed, preserving Peter's gains in Turkey, and freeing him to make war with Sweden. By
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