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112-519: Pleistocene Park ( Russian : Плейстоценовый парк , romanized :  Pleystotsenovyy park ) is a nature reserve on the Kolyma River south of Chersky in the Sakha Republic , Russia, in northeastern Siberia , where an attempt is being made to re-create the northern subarctic steppe grassland ecosystem that flourished in the area during the last glacial period . The project

224-674: 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

336-519: 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

448-410: A thaw lake , tundra lake , thaw depression , or tundra pond , refers to a body of freshwater, usually shallow, that is formed in a depression formed by thawing ice-rich permafrost. A key indicator of thermokarst lakes is the occurrence of excess ground ice as well as having an ice content with greater than 30% by volume. Thermokarst lakes tend to form and disappear in a cyclical manner, resulting in

560-430: 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) Thermokarst These pitted surfaces resemble clusters of small lakes formed by dissolution of limestone in some karst areas, which is how they came to have " karst " attached to their name, even though no limestone is actually present. Small domes that form on

672-558: 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

784-484: 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

896-588: 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

1008-622: 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

1120-463: A model of what an unregulated steppe ecosystem looked like before the advent of humans. It is situated near a federal road and a railway station and will be accessible to the general public. Wild Field comprises 300  ha (740  ac ) of which 280 ha have been fenced off and stocked with animals. Already present in the park are nine species of large herbivores and one omnivore species: Bashkir horses (a strain of Equus ferus caballus ) from

1232-402: A monitoring system for measuring the energy balance (ratio of energy emission and energy absorption) of the pasture was installed. Attention has now been shifted back to the further development of Pleistocene Park. A successful crowdfunding effort in early 2017 provided funding for further animal acquisitions. Later that year 12  domestic yak and 30  domestic sheep were brought to

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1344-863: A multitude of lakes . The average temperature in January is about –33 °C and in July +12 °C; annual precipitation is 200–250 mm. Pleistocene Park is owned and administered by a non-profit corporation, the Pleistocene Park Association, consisting of the ecologists from the Northeast Science Station in Chersky and the Grassland Institute in Yakutsk . The present park area was signed over to

1456-513: A positive feedback loop promoting the reestablishment of grassland ecosystems. This argument is the basis for rewilding Pleistocene Park's landscape with megafauna that were previously abundant in the area, as evidenced by the fossil record. The grassland-steppe ecosystem that dominated Siberia during the Pleistocene disappeared 10,000 years ago and was replaced by a mossy and forested tundra and taiga ecosystem. Concurrently, most of

1568-429: A predictable life cycle (see "life cycle" below). Continued thawing of the permafrost substrate can lead to the drainage and eventual disappearance of thermokarst lakes, leaving them, in such cases, a geomorphologically temporary phenomenon, formed in response to a warming climate. These lakes are typically found in arctic and subarctic lowlands, including the western Canadian Arctic (e.g. Banks Island, Victoria island),

1680-526: 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

1792-432: A study co-authored by Nikita Zimov and three University of Oxford researchers assessed the viability of the park's goals when implemented on a larger scale. It was estimated that if three large-scale experimental areas were set up, each containing 1000 animals and costing 114 million US dollars over a ten year period, that 72,000 metric tons of carbon could be held and generate 360,000 US dollars in carbon revenues. The park

1904-539: 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,

2016-481: 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

2128-401: 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

2240-402: Is a hub for international scientists and students, who come from around the world to conduct their own ecological research and experiments. The Polaris Project was a yearly visitor from 2009 to 2015, sending American students on excursions to the park each summer. Another group of visitors are journalists. The park is steadily gaining more media attention and while most journalists do not come to

2352-464: Is a large global carbon reservoir that has remained frozen throughout much of the Holocene. Due to recent climate change , the permafrost is beginning to thaw, releasing stored carbon and forming thermokarst lakes . When the thawed permafrost enters the thermokarst lakes, its carbon is converted into carbon dioxide and methane and released into the atmosphere. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and

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2464-610: 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

2576-673: Is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and

2688-467: Is being led by Russian scientists Sergey Zimov and Nikita Zimov, testing the hypothesis that repopulating with large herbivores (and predators) can restore rich grasslands ecosystems, as expected if overhunting , and not climate change , was primarily responsible for the extinction of wildlife and the disappearance of the grasslands at the end of the Pleistocene epoch . The aim of the project

2800-488: 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

2912-624: 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

3024-536: Is doubt that the majority of species can be introduced in such harsh conditions. For example, according to some critics, the Yakutian horses, although they have been living in the park for several generations, would not have survived without human intervention. They normally tolerate –60 °C, but are said to cope poorly with an abundance of snow and possibly would have died of starvation in the first snowy winter. However, horses of much less primitive stock abandoned by

3136-434: Is important as each species affects the environment differently and as the overall stability of the ecosystem increases with the variety of species (compare Biodiversity and ecological services ). Their numbers will be raised by reintroducing species that became locally extinct (e.g., muskoxen ). For species that became completely extinct, suitable replacements will be introduced if possible (e.g., wild Bactrian camels for

3248-573: 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

3360-474: Is nicknamed the "baby mammoth". In 2012 to 2014 a branch of Pleistocene Park named "Wild Field" ( Russian : Дикое поле , Dikoe pole ) was constructed near the city of Tula in Tula Oblast in the European part of Russia, approximately 250 km (150 mi) south of Moscow . Unlike Pleistocene Park, Wild Field's primary purpose is not scientific research but public outreach, i.e., it will provide

3472-564: 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

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3584-402: 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

3696-569: 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

3808-585: 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

3920-677: Is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and

4032-518: 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

4144-481: Is to recreate the extensive grasslands that covered the Beringia region in the late Pleistocene. In present-day Siberia only a few of the former species of megafauna are left; and their population density is extremely low, too low to affect the environment. To reach the desired effects, the density has to be raised artificially by fencing in and concentrating the existing large herbivores. A large variety of species

4256-500: Is to research the climatic effects of the expected changes in the ecosystem. Here the hypothesis is that the change from tundra to grassland will result in a raised ratio of energy emission to energy absorption of the area, leading to less thawing of permafrost and thereby less emission of greenhouse gases . It is also thought that removal of snow by large herbivores will further reduce the permafrost's insulation. To study this, large herbivores have been released, and their effect on

4368-461: Is variable, with some thaw lakes oriented, meaning they are generally elongated in a specific direction. Though their formation mechanism has not been definitively proven, it is believed to be related to the prevailing winds or storms. The disturbance (of either kind) leads to overall warming and melting of ground ice, after which surface subsidence occurs allowing for water infiltration of either surface water or melted ground ice. Teshekpuk Lake on

4480-420: Is when thaw occurs in palsas (frozen peat cores) or in lithalsas (mineral core mounds). Permafrost degradation is typically linked to a surface disturbance, either natural or artificial, in combination with site-specific factors, such as permafrost ice-content, ground temperature, etc. Development of thaw lakes tends to be slow at first, but once the average lake bottom temperature exceeds 0 °C (32 °F)

4592-470: 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

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4704-617: The Alaska North Slope within the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska is the largest thermokarst lake in the world. The initiation of a thaw lake begins with the degradation of ice-rich permafrost. The natural inception of thermokarst lakes can be demarcated into two separate processes; whether in continuous or discontinuous permafrost. In continuous permafrost, water accumulates when ice veins and polygonal ground are present. Through discontinuous permafrost, it

4816-1000: 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

4928-413: 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

5040-598: The Japanese Army have been living feral on some uninhabited Kuril Islands since 1945. Despite the deep snows (two to three times deeper than in Yakutia), they have successfully survived all the winters without feeding. And in Pleistocene Park, while some of the Yakutian horses accept supplementary feeding, others keep away and survive on their own. The Zimovs' concept of Pleistocene Park and repopulating

5152-584: 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

5264-721: 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

5376-427: The methane emissions from thermokarst lakes have the potential to initiate a positive feedback cycle in which increased atmospheric methane concentrations lead to amplified global climate change, which in turn leads to more permafrost thaw and more methane and carbon dioxide emissions. As the combined carbon stored in the world's permafrost (1670 Gt ) equals about twice the amount of the carbon currently released in

5488-419: The permafrost . Finally, once a high density of herbivores over a vast area has been reached, predators larger than the wolves will have to be introduced to keep the megafauna in check. The first grazing experiments began in 1988 at the Northeast Science Station in Chersky with Yakutian horses . In 1996 a 50  ha (125  acre ) enclosure was built in Pleistocene Park. As a first step in recreating

5600-519: The 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries. In Armenia , Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as

5712-457: The Alaskan coastal plain, interior Yukon Territory and the alluvial lowlands of northern Eurasia and Siberia. The presence of thaw lakes in a region results in a thermal disturbance as the water warms the ground. The depth of permafrost below a lake will generally be shallower and if the lake is of sufficient depth, a talik is present. The general morphology (shape, depth, circumference)

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5824-471: 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

5936-532: 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,

6048-590: 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

6160-526: 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

6272-807: 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

6384-458: 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

6496-458: 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

6608-467: 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

6720-449: The ancient landscape, the Yakutian horses were introduced, as horses had been the most abundant ungulates on the northeastern Siberian mammoth steppe. Of the first 40 horses, 15 were killed by predators and 12 died of eating poisonous plants. More horses were imported, and they learned to cope with the environment. In 2006 approximately 20 horses lived in the park, and by 2007 more horses were being born annually than died. By 2013,

6832-413: The animals had trampled down the snow. The grazers thus help keep permafrost intact, thereby lessening the amount of methane released by the tundra. In the years 2004–2005 a new fence was erected, creating an enclosure of 16  km (6  sq mi ). The new enclosure finally allowed a more rapid development of the project. After the fence was completed, reindeer were brought into the park from herds in

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6944-580: The association by the state and is exempt from land tax. The reserve is surrounded by a 600 km buffer zone that will be added to the park by the regional government once the animals have successfully established themselves. In July 2015 the "Pleistocene Park Foundation" . was founded, a non-profit organization (registered in Pennsylvania , US, with 501(c)(3) status) dedicated to acquiring private donations for funding Pleistocene Park. Hitherto Pleistocene Park had been financed solely through

7056-502: The atmosphere (720 Gt), the setting in motion of such a positive feedback cycle could potentially lead to a runaway climate change scenario . Even if the ecological situation of the arctic were as it was 400,000 years ago (i.e., grasslands instead of tundra), a global temperature rise of 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) relative to the pre-industrial level would be enough to start the thawing of permafrost in Siberia. An increased cooling of

7168-403: 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

7280-572: 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

7392-401: The extinct Pleistocene camels of the genus Paracamelus ). As the number of herbivores increases, the enclosure will be expanded. While this is taking place, the effects will be monitored. This concerns for example the effects on the flora (are the mosses being replaced by grasses, etc.), the effects on the atmosphere (changes in levels of methane, carbon dioxide, water vapor) and the effects on

7504-413: 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,

7616-456: 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

7728-472: The funds of the founders, a practice that grew increasingly insufficient. In 2019 the "Pleistocene & Permafrost Foundation" . 26 April 2023. was founded in Germany by Michael Kurzeja and Bernd Zehentbauer and serves as a bridge between science, politics, companies, and society. It takes care of the project's financing, seeks donations in kind such as tractors, utility vehicles, and pick-ups to build

7840-692: 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

7952-480: 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

8064-407: The ground during winter would raise the current tipping point , potentially delaying such a scenario. It has been proposed that the introduction of a variety of large herbivores will recreate their ancient ecological niches in Siberia and regenerate the Pleistocene terrain with its different ecological habitats such as taiga , tundra , steppe and alpine terrain . The main objective, however,

8176-464: The judicious return of appropriate herbivore communities." A secondary aim is to research the climatic effects of the expected changes in the ecosystem. Here the key concept is that some of the effects of the large herbivores, such as eradicating trees and shrubs or trampling snow, will result in a stronger cooling of the ground in the winter, leading to less thawing of permafrost during summer and thereby less emission of greenhouse gases . Permafrost

8288-595: The lake ceases freezing to the bottom and thaw becomes continuous. The lake grows as ice thaws, which may result in the slumping of shorelines or submergence of vegetation, which is why thaw lakes in the boreal forest tend to be surrounded by " drunken trees ". It should be specified that "drunken trees" (also known as drunken forests ) occur within Yedoma regimes. This feature is not present throughout all thermokarst regions. Upon expansion in this stage, thermokarst lakes often take on an elongated shape with ordered alignment in

8400-485: The large herbivores that roamed Siberia during the Pleistocene have vanished from the region. The mainstream explanation for this used to be that at the beginning of the Holocene the arid steppe climate changed into a humid one, and when the steppe vanished so did the steppe's animals. Sergei Zimov points out that in contradiction to this scenario: Zimov and colleagues argue for a reversed order of environmental change in

8512-771: The literature on orientation and morphology of thermokarst lakes. However, there are clearly a multitude of reasons beyond wind movement only, that contribute to the shape of lakes. Grosse et al . (2013) summarize endogenous and exogenous elements that are key factors in orientation including: Before complete drainage, lake edges recede through retrogressive thaw slumps (RTS) and subaerial debris flows. Actual drainage may be triggered by fluvial erosion or expansion of adjacent basins at inland locations. In coastal areas, drainage may be due to coastal retreat leading to thermal abrasion or erosion due to wave action. More gradual drainage (partial or complete) may be caused by local permafrost degradation and erosion. Lakes stop growing once drainage

8624-522: The local flora is being monitored. Preliminary results point at the ecologically low-grade tundra biome being converted into a productive grassland biome and at the energy emission of the area being raised. The primary aim of Pleistocene Park is to recreate the mammoth steppe (ancient taiga / tundra grasslands that were widespread in the region during the last ice age). The key concept is that animals, rather than climate, maintained that ecosystem. Reintroducing large herbivores to Siberia would then initiate

8736-658: The long axis. If lakes form in an area of ice-rich permafrost, coalescence of several smaller lakes may occur, producing a larger body of water, magnifying the thermal disturbance. Development may be further facilitated by lateral bank erosion. Additionally, thermal abrasion of thermokarst lake edges can expand the lake size, as well as lake bottom subsidence. Oriented morphology of lakes can take on shapes such as "elliptical, egg-shaped, triangular, rectangular, clam-shaped, or D-shaped", and commonly occur in terrain with sandy sediments. Polemic scholastic discussions pertaining to development of lakes’ shapes are commonplace throughout

8848-463: The mammoth steppe is listed as one of the "100 most substantive solutions to global warming" by Project Drawdown . The list, encompassing only technologically viable, existing solutions, was compiled by a team of over 200 scholars, scientists, policymakers, business leaders and activists; for each solution the carbon impact through the year 2050, the total and net cost to society, and the total lifetime savings were measured and modeled. In January 2020,

8960-457: The mammoth steppe. Humans, with their constantly improving technology, overhunted the large herbivores and led to their extinction and extirpation. Without herbivores grazing and trampling over the land, mosses, shrubs and trees were able to take over and replace the grassland ecosystem. If the grasslands were destroyed because herbivore populations were decimated by human hunting, then "it stands to reason that those landscapes can be reconstituted by

9072-524: 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

9184-399: The number had risen to about 30. Moose, already present in the region, were also introduced. The effects of large animals (mammoths and wisents ) on nature were artificially created by using an engineering tank and an 8 wheel drive Argo all-terrain vehicle to crush pathways through the willow shrub. The vegetation in the park started to change. In the areas where the horses grazed,

9296-515: 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

9408-461: 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,

9520-457: The park as a location for reintroduction in the event of such animals ever being produced, particularly in regard to the woolly mammoth ( Mammuthus primigenius ), an extinct ecosystem engineer with no living proxies. Currently the staff uses a vehicle to bulldoze trees too large to be broken by the park's residents but that would be vulnerable to mammoths, opening forest terrain that the animals can turn into grassland through grazing. This vehicle

9632-462: The park itself the number of visitors is increasing. In 2016 for example, the park was visited by a filmmaker, two print media (Swiss 24 Heures and American The Atlantic ), and two TV broadcasting companies (German ARD and American HBO ). The total of visitors for 2016 (summer months only) was 45. Pleistocene Park is a 160 km scientific nature reserve ( zakaznik ) consisting of willow brush , grasslands , swamps , forests and

9744-580: The park, and funds further research projects with the Max Planck Institute . "Dirk Steffens" . and "Anabel Ternès" . are involved as ambassadors. Despite referencing the Jurassic Park franchise in its name, the park's staff is not involved in species de-extinction research, be it through cloning , genome editing , or other methods (such as breeding back ). Nonetheless, Zimov has manifested his willingness to volunteer

9856-629: The park, the wapiti were from the Altai Mountains and the wisents from Prioksko-Terrasny Nature Reserve , near Moscow. The enclosing fence proved too low for the wapiti, and by the end of 2012 all 6 had jumped the fence and run off. In the years 2011–2016 progress slowed down as most energy was put into the construction of a 150  ha (370  ac ) branch of Pleistocene Park near the city of Tula in Tula Oblast in Europe, see below ( Wild Field section). A few more reindeer and moose were introduced into Pleistocene Park during this time, and

9968-406: The park. Critics admonish that introducing alien species could damage the fragile ecosystem of the existing tundra. To this criticism Sergey Zimov replied: "The tundra is not an ecosystem. Such systems had not existed on the planet [before the disappearance of the megafauna], and there is nothing to cherish in the tundra. Of course, it would be silly to create a desert instead of the tundra, but if

10080-647: The park. and the introduction of more muskoxen was planned for 2020. For the near future the focus in animal introductions will generally be placed on browsers, not grazers, i.e., bison , muskoxen , horses , and domestic yaks . Their role in this phase will be to diminish the amount of shrubs and trees and enlarge the grassy areas. Only when these areas have sufficiently increased will grazers like saiga and wild Bactrian camels be introduced. 2023 In 2023, 24 plains bison were brought to Pleistocene Park. The animals were sourced from Ditlevsdal Bison Farm, Denmark. Later that year, fourteen musk oxen were brought to

10192-446: 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

10304-453: 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

10416-459: 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

10528-418: 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

10640-479: 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

10752-472: 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 ,

10864-405: The region and are now the most numerous ungulates in the park. To increase moose density in the park, special constructions were added to the fence in several places that allow animals outside the fenced area to enter the park, while not allowing them to leave. Besides that, wild moose calves were caught in other regions and transported to the park. In 2007 a 32 meter (105 foot) high tower

10976-491: 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

11088-482: The same site would evolve into a steppe, then it certainly would improve the environment. If deer, foxes, bovines were more abundant, nature would only benefit from this. And people too. However, the danger still exists, of course, you have to be very careful. If it is a revival of the steppes, then, for example, small animals are really dangerous to release without control. As for large herbivores – no danger, as they are very easy to remove again." Another point of concern

11200-416: The soil has been compacted and mosses, weeds and willow shrub were replaced by grasses. Flat grassland is now the dominating landscape inside the park. The permafrost was also influenced by the grazers. When air temperature sank to −40  °C (−40  °F ) in winter, the temperature of the ground was found to be only –5 °C (+23 °F) under an intact cover of snow, but −30 °C (−22 °F) where

11312-658: The southern part of the Ural Mountains, Altai maral / Altai wapiti ( Cervus canadensis sibiricus ), Edilbaevskaya sheep (a strain of Ovis orientalis aries ), roe deer ( Capreolus spec. ), Kalmykian cattle (a strain of Bos primigenius taurus ), domestic yaks ( Bos mutus grunniens ), wild boar ( Sus scrofa ), one female elk / moose ( Alces alces ), four reindeer ( Rangifer tarandus ) and 73 domestic Pridonskaya goats (a strain of Capra aegagrus hircus ). [REDACTED] Media related to Pleistocene Park at Wikimedia Commons Russian language Russian

11424-481: The surface due to frost heaving with the onset of winter are only temporary features. They collapse during the following summer thaw, leaving a small surface depression. Some ice lenses grow and form larger surface hummocks (" pingos ") which can last for many years, and sometimes become covered with grasses and sedges , until they begin to thaw. These domed surfaces eventually collapse – either annually or after longer periods – and form depressions which become part of

11536-679: 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

11648-459: 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

11760-786: 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

11872-407: The uneven terrains included under the general category of thermokarst . The formation of permafrost thaw lakes due to warming climate is a positive feedback loop, as methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide are released as permafrost thaws, contributing to further climate warming. The Batagaika crater in Siberia is an example of a large thermokarst depression. A thermokarst lake, also called

11984-511: 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

12096-697: 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

12208-492: Was erected in the park that constantly monitors the levels of methane, carbon dioxide and water vapor in the park's atmosphere. In September 2010, 6 male muskox from Wrangel Island were reintroduced, but 2  muskoxen died in the first months: one from unknown causes, and the other from infighting among the muskoxen. Seven months later, in April ;2011, 6  Altai wapiti and 5  wisents arrived at

12320-405: 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

12432-421: 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

12544-402: 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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