181-610: Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky ( Russian : Константин Константинович (Ксаверьевич) Рокоссовский; Polish : Konstanty Rokossowski ; 21 December 1896 – 3 August 1968) was a Soviet and Polish officer who became a Marshal of the Soviet Union , a Marshal of Poland , and served as Poland's Defence Minister from 1949 until his removal in 1956 during the Polish October . He became one of
362-674: A constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%. Starting in 2019, instruction in Russian will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, and in general instruction in Latvian public high schools. On 29 September 2022, Saeima passed in
543-519: A new education law which requires all schools to teach at least partially in Ukrainian, with provisions while allow indigenous languages and languages of national minorities to be used alongside the national language. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. The 2019 Law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" gives priority to
724-457: A "traitor". V. V. Rachesky, a cell mate of Rokossovsky, wrote in his memoirs that Rokossovsky blamed the persecution of innocent people on the NKVD. He thought the officer to be "naive", refusing to acknowledge Stalin's role in creating the treacherous environment. He described Rokossovsky's refusal to sign a false confession : Those who refused to sign a false statement were beaten up, as long as
905-469: A confrontation. They looked for Yushkevich and found that he had died long before. Alexander Solzhenitsyn reports that Rokossovsky endured two mock shooting events, where he was taken out at night by a firing squad as if to be executed, but then returned to prison. Living relatives say that Svetlana Pavlovna, wife of Marshal Kazakov , confirmed that Rokossovsky sustained severe injuries, including broken and denailed fingers and cracked ribs, in addition to
1086-483: A double goal. On the one hand, it had been an effort to counter Russian chauvinism by assuring a place for non-Russian languages and cultures in the newly formed Soviet Union. On the other hand, it was a means to prevent the formation of alternative ethnically based political movements , including pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism . One way of accomplishing this was to promote what some regard as artificial distinctions between ethnic groups and languages rather than promoting
1267-520: A false statement and proved to the court that the officer who his NKVD accusers claimed had denounced him had in fact been killed in 1920 during the civil war: The evidence was based on the testimony of Adolph Yushkevich, a colleague of my grandfather in the Civil War. But my grandfather knew very well that Yushkevich died in Perekop . He said that he would sign [a confession] if Adolph was brought for
1448-444: 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) Russify Russification ( Russian : русификация , romanized : rusifikatsiya ), Russianisation or Russianization , is a form of cultural assimilation in which non- Russians , whether involuntarily or voluntarily, give up their culture and language in favor of
1629-484: 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
1810-591: A large scale. Nominally, this process was guided by the principle of "voluntary parental choice." But other factors also came into play, including the size and formal political status of the group in the Soviet federal hierarchy and the prevailing level of bilingualism among parents. By the early 1970s schools in which non-Russian languages served as the principal medium of instruction operated in 45 languages, while seven more indigenous languages were taught as subjects of study for at least one class year. By 1980, instruction
1991-588: A lesser extent the languages to the south and the east: Uralic , Turkic , Persian , Arabic , and Hebrew . According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California , Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency. Feudal divisions and conflicts created obstacles between
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#17327755314052172-622: 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
2353-548: A people totalling less than one million in number. On 19 June 2018, the Russian State Duma adopted a bill that made education in all languages but Russian optional, overruling previous laws by ethnic autonomies , and reducing instruction in minority languages to only two hours a week. This bill has been likened by some commentators, such as in Foreign Affairs , to the policy of Russification. When
2534-499: A process of changing one's ethnic self-label or identity from a non-Russian ethnonym to Russian, from Russianization , the spread of the Russian language, culture, and people into non-Russian cultures and regions, distinct also from Sovietization or the imposition of institutional forms established by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union throughout the territory ruled by that party. In this sense, although Russification
2715-526: 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
2896-457: A radio van. At first, Rokossovsky had to resort to pulling together a fighting group from reserve units and retreating stragglers, but over the coming days it became a more substantial force. Retreating regiments and divisions from the 44th Rifle Corps filtered out of the Smolensk pocket and were transferred to his command and fresh forces arrived from the reserve—the 107th Tank Division (formerly
3077-469: A second language but they also adopted it as their home language or mother tongue – although some still retained their sense of ethnic identity or origins even after shifting their native language to Russian. This includes both the traditional communities (e.g., Lithuanians in the northwestern Belarus ( see Eastern Vilnius region ) or the Kaliningrad Oblast ( see Lithuania Minor )) and
3258-1115: A second language or using it as a primary language. In the last decades of the Soviet Union, ethnic Russification (or ethnic assimilation ) was moving very rapidly for a few nationalities such as the Karelians and Mordvinians . Whether children born in mixed families to one Russian parent were likely to be raised as Russians depended on the context. For example, the majority of children in North Kazakhstan with one of each parent chose Russian as their nationality on their internal passport at age 16. Children of mixed Russian and Estonian parents living in Tallinn (the capital city of Estonia ), or mixed Russian and Latvian parents living in Riga (the capital of Latvia ), or mixed Russian and Lithuanian parents living in Vilnius (the capital of Lithuania ) most often chose as their own nationality that of
3439-649: A section added to the penal code in June 1937. The charges against Rokossovsky stemmed from the case of the "Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Military Organization of the 11th Mechanized Corps ". Rokossovsky was implicated after the arrest of Corps Commander Kasyan Chaykovsky who, like Rokossovsky, served in the Far East in the early 1930s. The Intelligence Chief of the Transbaikal Military District accused Rokossovsky of meeting with Colonel Komatsubara ,
3620-422: A single common language would be adopted by all nationalities in the Soviet Union, "the obliteration of national distinctions, and especially language distinctions, is a considerably more drawn-out process than the obliteration of class distinctions." At the time, Soviet nations and nationalities were further flowering their cultures and drawing together (сближение – sblizhenie) into a stronger union. In his Report on
3801-629: A stocking factory. In 1911, at age 15, he became an apprentice stonemason. Much later in his life, the government of the Polish People's Republic used this fact for propaganda, claiming that Rokossovsky had helped to build Warsaw's Poniatowski Bridge . When Rokossovsky enlisted in the Imperial Russian Army at the start of the First World War , his patronymic Ksaveryevich was Russified to Konstantinovich . This
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#17327755314053982-426: A strong will. Decisive and firm. Often demonstrates initiative and skillfully applies it. Disciplined. Demanding and persistent in his demands. A somewhat ungracious and not sufficiently sympathetic person. Rather stubborn. Painfully proud. In professional terms well trained. Broadly experienced as a military leader... Absolutely cannot be used in staff or teaching jobs because constitutionally he hates them. Rokossovsky
4163-539: 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,
4344-481: 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
4525-401: 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
4706-610: 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
4887-446: Is assigning Russian nationals to lead administrative positions in national institutions. In culture, Russification primarily amounts to the domination of the Russian language in official business and the strong influence of the Russian language on national idioms. The shifts in demographics in favour of the ethnic Russian population are sometimes considered a form of Russification as well. Some researchers distinguish Russification , as
5068-488: 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
5249-624: 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
5430-573: 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
5611-564: 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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5792-402: 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
5973-569: 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
6154-585: 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
6335-532: Is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of
6516-518: 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
6697-403: Is usually conflated across Russification, Russianization, and Russian-led Sovietization, each can be considered a distinct process. Russianization and Sovietization, for example, did not automatically lead to Russification – a change in language or self-identity of non-Russian people to being Russian. Thus, despite long exposure to the Russian language and culture, as well as to Sovietization, at
6878-604: The 13th Panzer Division attacked south from Lutsk the next day clearing Rokossovsky's forces from the road and allowing German infantry to recapture Dubno, while it drove off the 19th Mechanized and captured Rovno in Rokossovsky's rear. As German resistance stiffened, Mikhail Kirponos, the commander of the Southwestern Front, issued instructions to cease offensive operations that were immediately countermanded by his superior, Chief of General Staff G.K. Zhukov, who
7059-487: The 14th Panzer Division , but the 35th and 20th Tank divisions were able to cobble together advance forces to cut the Lutsk–Dubno road, even though their full force had not yet arrived on the battlefield. On the same day elements of the 19th Mechanized Corps, operating to his east out of Rovno , had succeeded in temporarily driving the rearguard of the 11th Panzer Division from Dubno, cutting off its advance units. In response
7240-470: 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
7421-1000: 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
Konstantin Rokossovsky - Misplaced Pages Continue
7602-895: The Bolshevik Party . Soon thereafter, he entered the ranks of the Red Army . During the Russian Civil War he commanded a cavalry squadron of the Kargopolsky Red Guards Cavalry Detachment in the campaigns against the White Guard armies of Aleksandr Kolchak in the Urals . In November 1919, he was wounded in the shoulder there by an opposing officer whom he later killed when his cavalry overran an enemy headquarters. Rokossovsky received Soviet Russia's highest military decoration at
7783-854: The Caucasus , and in the Volga region (including Tatarstan ). This detached the local Muslim populations from exposure to the language and writing system of the Quran . The new alphabet for these languages was based on the Latin alphabet and was also inspired by the Turkish alphabet . By the late 1930s, the policy had changed. In 1939–1940, the Soviets decided that a number of these languages (including Tatar , Kazakh , Uzbek , Turkmen , Tajik , Kyrgyz , Azerbaijani , and Bashkir ) would henceforth use variations of
7964-413: 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
8145-570: The Cyrillic script (see Cyrillization in the Soviet union ). Not only that, the spelling and writing of these new Cyrillic words must also be in accordance with the Russian language. Some historians evaluating the Soviet Union as a colonial empire , applied the " prison of nations " idea to the USSR. Thomas Winderl wrote "The USSR became in a certain sense more a prison-house of nations than
8326-474: The Cyrillic script . Before and during World War II, Joseph Stalin deported to Central Asia and Siberia many entire nationalities for their alleged and largely disproven collaboration with the German invaders: Volga Germans , Crimean Tatars , Chechens , Ingush , Balkars , Kalmyks , and others. Shortly after the war, he deported many Ukrainians , Balts , and Estonians to Siberia as well. After
8507-644: The Komi began but it did not penetrate the Komi heartlands until the 18th century. However, by the 19th century, Komi-Russian bilingualism had become the norm and there was an increasing Russian influence on the Komi language . After the Russian defeat in the Crimean War in 1856 and the January Uprising of 1863, Tsar Alexander II increased Russification to reduce the threat of future rebellions. Russia
8688-644: The Russian Empire ), or, according to other sources, in Velikiye Luki , Rokossovsky served in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I . In 1917 he joined the Red Guards and in 1918 the newly-formed Red Army ; he fought with great distinction during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. Rokossovsky held senior commands until 1937 when he fell victim to the Great Purge , during which he
8869-455: The Russian culture and the Russian language . In a historical sense, the term refers to both official and unofficial policies of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union concerning their national constituents and to national minorities in Russia, aimed at Russian domination and hegemony. The major areas of Russification are politics and culture. In politics, an element of Russification
9050-667: The Russo-Chinese Eastern Railroad War of 1929–1930 . The Soviet Union intervened to return the Chinese Eastern Railway to joint Chinese and Soviet administration, after Chinese warlord Zhang Xueliang of the Republic of China attempted to seize complete control of the railway. It was in the early 1930s that Rokossovsky's military career first became closely intertwined those of Semyon Timoshenko and Georgy Zhukov: when Rokossovsky
9231-492: The Southwestern Front at the outbreak of hostilities with Germany. The German army is a machine, and machines can be broken! When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941 Rokossovsky was serving as the commander of the 9th Mechanized Corps with the 35th and 20th Tank Divisions, and the 131st Motorized Division under his command. He was immediately engaged in the early tank battles that raged around
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#17327755314059412-585: The Special Red Banner Far Eastern Army , and the intrigues surrounding Marshal Vasily Blyukher may have been enough to cause his arrest. Blyukher was arrested shortly after Rokossovsky and died in prison without 'confessing'. Rokossovsky, however, survived. He was variously accused of having links to Polish and Japanese intelligence and having committed acts of sabotage under Article 58 , section 14; "conscious non-execution or deliberately careless execution of defined duties",
9593-584: 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
9774-641: The United States Census , in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States. Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following: The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to
9955-614: The de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It
10136-525: The 10th class), the pattern of using the Russian language as the main medium of instruction accelerated after Khrushchev's parental choice program got underway. Pressure to convert the main medium of instruction to Russian was evidently higher in urban areas. For example, in 1961–62, reportedly only 6% of Tatar children living in urban areas attended schools in which Tatar was the main medium of instruction. Similarly in Dagestan in 1965, schools in which
10317-562: The 1970s schooling was offered in at least seven languages in Uzbekistan : Russian, Uzbek , Tajik , Kazakh , Turkmen , Kyrgyz , and Karakalpak . While formally all languages were equal, in almost all Soviet republics the Russian/local bilingualism was "asymmetric": the titular nation learned Russian, whereas immigrant Russians generally did not learn the local language. In addition, many non-Russians who lived outside their respective administrative units tended to become Russified linguistically; that is, they not only learned Russian as
10498-461: The 19th century. Russian Imperial authorities as well as modern Russian nationalists asserted that Russification was an organic national consolidation process that would accomplish the goals of homogenizing the Russian nation as they saw it, and reversing the effects of Polonization . After the 1917 revolution , authorities in the USSR decided to abolish the use of the Arabic alphabet in native languages in Soviet-controlled Central Asia, in
10679-405: 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
10860-514: The 26 June "jump off", and entered the fray piecemeal. His orders were to move forward and take up positions around Lutsk north of the town of Dubno in co-ordination with the 19th Mechanized Corps under N. V. Feklenko, and attack south-west, while the Mechanized Corps of the 6th Army attacked northward from Brody to meet them, with the intent of cutting off the advance of the 11th Panzer Division east. On 25 June, Rokossovsky's 131st Motorized were quickly driven out of their position at Lutsk by
11041-478: The 5th and 6th Army had been interdicting Army Group South's advance in Ukraine, complete disorder and panic gripped the Soviet forces in Byelorussia , where the disabling impact of poor organization, logistics and communications were exponentially greater. The Red Army collapsed under the well coordinated attack of Field Marshal von Bock's Army Group Center . Within seventeen days, during the Battle of Białystok–Minsk three quarters of D.G. Pavlov 's Western Front
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#173277553140511222-401: The 69th Motorized Division from the Trans-Baikal Military District ) and the 101st Tank Division equipped with 220 outdated but functional tanks. 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
11403-412: 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
11584-441: The Caucasus called for the legislation to be blocked. On 10 September 2019, Udmurt activist Albert Razin self-immolated in front of the regional government building in Izhevsk as it was considering passing the controversial bill to reduce the status of the Udmurt language . Between 2002 and 2010 the number of Udmurt speakers dwindled from 463,000 to 324,000. Other languages in the Volga region recorded similar declines in
11765-523: The Communist Party's socialist project for the Soviet society as a whole but have active participation and leadership by the indigenous nationalities and operate primarily in the local languages. Early nationality policies shared with later policy the object of assuring control by the Communist Party over all aspects of Soviet political, economic, and social life. The early Soviet policy of promoting what one scholar has described as "ethnic particularism" and another as "institutionalized multinationality", had
11946-495: The Duma representatives from the Caucasus did not oppose the bill, it prompted a large outcry in the North Caucasus with representatives from the region being accused of cowardice. The law was also seen as possibly destabilizing, threatening ethnic relations and revitalizing the various North Caucasian nationalist movements. The International Circassian Organization called for the law to be rescinded before it came into effect. Twelve of Russia's ethnic autonomies, including five in
12127-409: 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,
12308-468: 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
12489-407: The Lutsk–Dubno–Brody triangle, also known as the Battle of Brody — an early Soviet counter-attack that was the most significant Soviet tank operation of the early stages of Operation Barbarossa. The battle involved a large scale attack involving five mechanized corps aimed at penetrating the German line in the direction of Lublin based on a plan developed before hostilities commenced. Orders for
12670-411: 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
12851-412: The North Caucasus is nearly devoid of schools that teach in mainly their native languages, with the exception of one school in North Ossetia, and a few in rural regions of Dagestan; this is true even in largely monoethnic Chechnya and Ingushetia. Chechen and Ingush are still used as languages of everyday communication to a greater degree than their North Caucasian neighbours, but sociolinguistics argue that
13032-682: The Program to the Congress, Khrushchev used even stronger language: that the process of further rapprochement (sblizhenie) and greater unity of nations would eventually lead to a merging or fusion (слияние – sliyanie) of nationalities. Khrushchev's formula of rapprochement-fusing was moderated slightly when Leonid Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1964 (a post he held until his death in 1982). Brezhnev asserted that rapprochement would lead ultimately to
13213-551: The RSFSR, whereas 27% of children in classes I-IV (primary school) studied in Russian-language schools, 53% of those in classes V-VIII (incomplete secondary school) studied in Russian-language schools, and 66% of those in classes IX-X studied in Russian-language schools. Although many non-Russian languages were still offered as a subject of study at a higher class level (in some cases through complete general secondary school –
13394-807: 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
13575-403: The Russian language gained greater emphasis. In 1938, Russian became a required subject of study in every Soviet school, including those in which a non-Russian language was the principal medium of instruction for other subjects (e.g., mathematics, science, and social studies). In 1939, non-Russian languages that had been given Latin-based scripts in the late 1920s were given new scripts based on
13756-644: The Russian language was regarded as the language for interethnic communication for the whole Soviet Union. Therefore, for most of the Soviet era, especially after the korenizatsiya (indigenization) policy ended in the 1930s, schools in which non-Russian Soviet languages would be taught were not generally available outside the respective ethnically based administrative units of these ethnicities. Some exceptions appeared to involve cases of historic rivalries or patterns of assimilation between neighboring non-Russian groups, such as between Tatars and Bashkirs in Russia or among major Central Asian nationalities. For example, even in
13937-458: 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
14118-542: The Russian word narod ("people") implied an ethnic community , not just a civic or political community. October 13, 1978, the Soviet Council of Ministers enacted (but did not officially publish) 1978 Decree No. 835, titled "On measures to further improve the teaching and learning of the Russian language in the Union Republics", directing mandating the teaching of Russian , starting in first grade, in
14299-405: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian
14480-637: The Soviet era, a significant number of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians migrated to other Soviet republics, and many of them settled there. According to the last census in 1989, the Russian 'diaspora' in the non-Russian Soviet republics had reached 25 million. Progress in the spread of the Russian language as a second language and the gradual displacement of other languages was monitored in Soviet censuses. The Soviet censuses of 1926, 1937, 1939, and 1959, had included questions on "native language" (родной язык) as well as "nationality." The 1970, 1979, and 1989 censuses added to these questions one on "other language of
14661-440: The USSR to use their native languages and the free development of these languages will be ensured in the future as well. At the same time learning the Russian language, which has been voluntarily accepted by the Soviet people as a medium of communication between different nationalities, besides the language of one's nationality, broadens one's access to the achievements of science and technology and of Soviet and world culture. During
14842-467: 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
15023-509: The amalgamation of these groups and a common set of languages based on Turkish or another regional language. The Soviet nationalities policy from its early years sought to counter these two tendencies by assuring a modicum of cultural autonomy to non-Russian nationalities within a federal system or structure of government, though maintaining that the ruling Communist Party was monolithic, not federal. A process of "national-territorial delimitation" ( ru:национально-территориальное размежевание )
15204-679: The appointment of his father as the inspector of the Warsaw Railways . The Rokossovsky family were members of the Polish nobility (of the Oksza coat of arms ), and over generations had produced many cavalry officers. But Konstantin's father, Ksawery Wojciech Rokossowski, worked as a civil railway official in the Russian Empire. His mother, Antonina Ovsyannikova, was Russian and a teacher. Orphaned at 14, Rokossovsky started working in
15385-428: The attack from Zhukov were met with little enthusiasm from the Southwestern Front staff that wanted to maintain a defensive posture. Nonetheless, the attack proceeded. The operation met with numerous difficulties in mobilization, coordination, communication, transportation and execution but scored some initial successes, which were parried by the quick action of Von Rundstedt 's Army Group South in Ukraine and ended in
15566-574: The bill was still being considered, advocates for minorities warned that the bill could endanger their languages and traditional cultures. The law came after a lawsuit in the summer of 2017, where a Russian mother claimed that her son had been "materially harmed" by learning the Tatar language , while in a speech Putin argued that it was wrong to force someone to learn a language that is not their own. The later "language crackdown" in which autonomous units were forced to stop mandatory hours of native languages
15747-614: The border town of Troitskosavsk , he appeared headed north and threatened to cut off the Soviet far east from the rest of the Soviet Union. Rokossovsky quickly moved south from Irkutsk and met up with allied Sükhbaatar Mongol forces; together the units defeated Urgern-Sternberg's army, which retreated in disarray after a two-day engagement. Rokossovsky was again wounded, this time in the leg. The combined Mongol and Soviet forces soon thereafter captured Ulaanbaatar . Rokossovsky met his future wife in Mongolia: Julia Barminan
15928-403: 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
16109-466: The collapse of the Soviet Union, especially in connection with urbanization and the declining population replacement rates (particularly low among the more western groups). As a result, several of Russia's indigenous languages and cultures are currently considered endangered . E.g. between the 1989 and 2002 censuses, the assimilation numbers of the Mordvins have totalled over 100,000, a major loss for
16290-476: The communities that appeared during Soviet times such as Ukrainian or Belarusian workers in Kazakhstan or Latvia , whose children attended primarily the Russian-language schools and thus the further generations are primarily speaking Russian as their native language; for example, 57% of Estonia's Ukrainians, 70% of Estonia's Belarusians and 37% of Estonia's Latvians claimed Russian as the native language in
16471-491: The complete unity of nationalities. "Unity" is an ambiguous term because it can imply either the maintenance of separate national identities but a higher stage of mutual attraction, similarity between nationalities or total disappearance of ethnic differences. In the political context of the time, rapprochement-unity was regarded as a softening of the pressure toward Russification that Khrushchev had promoted with his endorsement of sliyanie. The 24th Party Congress in 1971 launched
16652-430: The continued flourishing of the nations and nationalities and the fact that they are steadily and voluntarily drawing closer together on the basis of equality and fraternal cooperation. Neither artificial prodding nor holding back of the objective trends of development is admissible here. In the long term historical perspective, this development will lead to complete unity of the nations.... The equal right of all citizens of
16833-572: 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
17014-528: The cultural values and traditions of the Muslim population. Eventually, 240 such schools for both boys and girls, including a women's college founded in 1901, were established prior to the "Sovietization" of the South Caucasus. The first Russian-Azeri reference library opened in 1894. In 1918, during the short period of Azerbaijan's independence , the government declared Azeri the official language, but
17195-627: The current situation will lead to their degradation relative to Russian as well. In 2020, a set of amendments to the Russian constitution was approved by the State Duma and later the Federation Council . One of the amendments enshrined Russian nation as the "state-forming nationality" (Russian: государствообразующий народ ) and Russian the “language of the state-forming nationality”. The amendment has been met with criticism from Russia's minorities who argue that it goes against
17376-632: The cutting-edge methods of Marshal Tukhachevsky may have been the cause of his conflict with more traditional officers such as Semyon Budenny , who still favoured cavalry tactics over Tukhachevsky's mass armour theories , but few historians believe that the purge of the Red Army was solely a dispute over policy. Most attribute the purges to political and military rivalries as well. Some officers were swept up on suspicion due to past associations; in Rokossovky's case his Polish ancestry, association with
17557-425: The destruction of most of the participating Soviet forces. Upon receiving his orders Rokossovsky, whose divisions were stationed far to the rear of the frontier, had to commandeer trucks from the local reserve to carry munitions, and mount some of his infantry on tanks while the rest were forced to walk, splitting his forces. As a consequence, his forces were behind schedule and only an advanced guard were able to meet
17738-526: The distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of the consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate
17919-493: The end of the Soviet era , non-Russians were on the verge of becoming a majority of the population in the Soviet Union . After the two collapses: of Russian Empire in 1917 and Soviet Union in 1991 major processes of derussification took place. The Russification of Uralic-speaking people, such as Vepsians , Mordvins , Maris , and Permians , indigenous to large parts of western and central Russia had already begun with
18100-418: The end of the Soviet era, doctrinal rationalization had been provided for some of the practical policy steps that were taken in the areas of education and the media. First of all, the transfer of many "national schools" (schools based on local languages) to Russian as a medium of instruction accelerated under Khrushchev in the late 1950s and continued into the 1980s. Second, the new doctrine was used to justify
18281-438: The enemy outnumbered us to such a degree, that I took on the personal responsibility of ordering to halt the counteroffensive and to meet the enemy in prepared defences. Because of this, Ryabyshev's 8th Mechanized, which had also scored some early successes operating out of Brody, was in effect continuing to attack from the south with the expectation of support from Rokossovsky, who had stood down his forces, and did not arrive from
18462-413: 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,
18643-496: The false statement was not signed. There were steadfast people who stubbornly did not sign. But there were relatively few. K. K. Rokossovsky, as he sat with me in the same cell, did not sign a false statement. But he was a brave and strong man, tall and broad-shouldered. He too was beaten. His grandson, Colonel Konstantin Rokossovsky Vilevich, later said that his grandfather escaped execution because he refused to sign
18824-421: The federal system. Federalism and the provision of native-language education ultimately left as a legacy a large non-Russian public that was educated in the languages of their ethnic groups and that identified a particular homeland on the territory of the Soviet Union. By the late 1930s, policies had shifted. Purges in some of the national regions, such as Ukraine , had occurred already in the early 1930s. Before
19005-456: 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
19186-433: The first class (grade) in 67 languages between 1934 and 1980. Educational reforms were undertaken after Nikita Khrushchev became First Secretary of the Communist Party in the late 1950s and launched a process of replacing non-Russian schools with Russian ones for the nationalities that had lower status in the federal system, the nationalities whose populations were smaller and the nationalities which were already bilingual on
19367-548: The former of which resulted in Mordvins no longer being among the top ten largest ethnic groups in Russia. Russia was introduced to the South Caucasus following its colonisation in the first half of the nineteenth century after Qajar Iran was forced to cede its Caucasian territories per the Treaty of Gulistan and Treaty of Turkmenchay in 1813 and 1828 respectively to Russia. By 1830 there were schools with Russian as
19548-430: The front-line commanders of the besieged armies criminally "treasonous". Rather than retreat, Timoshenko's armies would stand their ground and attempt to recapture Smolensk. "Group Yartsevo" was in theory a large army-sized formation, but when Rokossovsky arrived at Timoshenko's headquarters on the evening of the 17th, he was in fact in charge of his own small staff, two quad anti-aircraft machine guns mounted on trucks and
19729-631: The generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to
19910-480: 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
20091-588: The head of the Japanese military mission in Harbin in 1932, when he was commander of the 15th Cavalry Division in Trans-Baikal. Rokossovsky did not dispute the fact of the meeting but said that it was to resolve issues regarding Chinese prisoners. Material charges against him claimed various acts of negligence of command that were interpreted as deliberate acts of sabotage (known as "wrecking" ), such as allowing
20272-541: The health of the Russian people, because in this war they earned general recognition as the leading force of the Soviet Union among all the nationalities of our country. The view was reflected in the new State Anthem of the Soviet Union which started with: "An unbreakable union of free republics, Great Russia has sealed forever." Anthems of nearly all Soviet republics mentioned "Russia" or "Russian nation" singled out as "brother", "friend", "elder brother" ( Uzbek SSR ) or "stronghold of friendship" ( Turkmen SSR ). Although
20453-420: The idea that a new " Soviet people " was forming on the territory of the USSR, a community for which the common language – the language of the "Soviet people" – was the Russian language, consistent with the role that Russian was playing for the fraternal nations and nationalities in the territory already. This new community was labeled a people (народ – narod ), not a nation (нация – natsiya ), but in that context
20634-418: The indigenous language was the medium of instruction existed only in rural areas. The pattern was probably similar, if less extreme, in most of the non-Russian union republics , although in Belarus and Ukraine, schooling in urban areas was highly Russianized. The promotion of federalism and of non-Russian languages had always been a strategic decision aimed at expanding and maintaining Communist Party rule. On
20815-538: The land bridge that separates the West Dvina and Dnepr rivers with the aim of enveloping Smolensk from the north. Heinz Guderian 's 2nd Panzer Group pushed toward Smolensk directly through Orsha and bypassed Mogilev with the ultimate objective of making a deep penetration far to the rear of the Soviet front line beyond Yelnya and toward Moscow. Despite his insubordination during the Battle of Dubno, Rokossovsky
20996-601: The language of instruction in the cities of Shusha , Baku , Yelisavetpol ( Ganja ), and Shemakha ( Shamakhi ); later such schools were established in Kuba ( Quba ), Ordubad , and Zakataly ( Zaqatala ). Education in Russian was unpopular amongst ethnic Azerbaijanis until 1887 when Habib bey Mahmudbeyov and Sultan Majid Ganizadeh founded the first Russian–Azerbaijani school in Baku. A secular school with instruction in both Russian and Azeri , its programs were designed to be consistent with
21177-445: The last Soviet census of 1989. Russian replaced Yiddish and other languages as the main language of many Jewish communities inside the Soviet Union as well. Another consequence of the mixing of nationalities and the spread of bilingualism and linguistic Russification was the growth of ethnic intermarriage and a process of ethnic Russification—coming to call oneself Russian by nationality or ethnicity, not just speaking Russian as
21358-670: The law came after a decade in which educational opportunities in the indigenous languages was reduced by more than 50%, due to budget reductions and federal efforts to decrease the role of languages other than Russian. During this period, numerous indigenous languages in the North Caucasus showed significant decreases in their numbers of speakers even though the numbers of the corresponding nationalities increased, leading to fears of language replacement . The numbers of Ossetian, Kumyk and Avar speakers dropped by 43,000, 63,000 and 80,000 respectively. As of 2018, it has been reported that
21539-632: The leader of Poland, Rokossovsky then returned to the Soviet Union, where he lived out the rest of his life until his death in 1968. Konstanty Ksaweriewicz Rokossowski (Konstantin Ksaveryevich Rokossovsky) was born in Velikiye Luki ; or in Warsaw , then part of Congress Poland under Russian rule ; or in the village of Telekhany , Brest Region in modern Belarus (then the Russian Empire). His family had moved to Warsaw following
21720-455: The most prominent Red Army commanders of World War II . Not much is known about Rokossovsky's life from his youth to the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, as he was a very private man. Much of what we know from this period is from interviews with his friends and family as well as Rokossovsky's memoirs, which are generally considered reliable but have some discrepancies with documentation. Born in Warsaw (in present-day Poland; then part of
21901-441: The most widely spoken language, and that Russians were the majority of the population of the country, were also cited in justification of the special place of the Russian language in government, education, and the media. At the 27th CPSU Party Congress in 1986, presided over by Mikhail Gorbachev , the 4th Party Program reiterated the formulas of the previous program: Characteristic of the national relations in our country are both
22082-452: The north bank of the river contained in a triangle between Vitebsk to the north-west, Yartsevo to the north-east, and Smolensk to the South. With his front rapidly deteriorating Timoshenko released Rokossovsky from 4th Army (a command he had assumed in name only) and gave him the task of assembling a stopgap formation to be called "Group Yartsevo" that would deal with the emergency presented by
22263-588: The north. Neither were aware of this fact, because there was no available direct communication between the individual corps, an example of how the endemic communication problems helped foil the Soviet efforts. Throughout the next days, Rokossovsky's forces put considerable pressure on the Germans at Lutsk and tried to recapture Rovno in their rear, while stopping the advance of the 14th Panzer by ambushing them with 85mm anti-tank guns at close range and with good effect. He observed in his memoirs that "the terrain off-road
22444-524: 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
22625-473: The number of speakers; between the 2002 and 2010 censuses the number of Mari speakers declined from 254,000 to 204,000 while Chuvash recorded only 1,042,989 speakers in 2010, a 21.6% drop from 2002. This is attributed to a gradual phasing out of indigenous language teaching both in the cities and rural areas while regional media and governments shift exclusively to Russian. In the North Caucasus ,
22806-445: The official literature on nationalities and languages in subsequent years continued to speak of there being 130 equal languages in the USSR, in practice a hierarchy was endorsed in which some nationalities and languages were given special roles or viewed as having different long-term futures. An analysis of textbook publishing found that education was offered for at least one year and it was also offered to children who were in at least
22987-493: The old Empire had ever been." Stalin's Marxism and the National Question (1913) provided the basic framework for nationality policy in the Soviet Union. The early years of said policy, from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s, were guided by the policy of korenizatsiya ("indigenization"), during which the new Soviet regime sought to reverse the long-term effects of Russification on the non-Russian populations. As
23168-565: The original eastward expansion of East Slavs . Written records of the oldest period are scarce, but toponymic evidence indicates that this expansion was accomplished at the expense of various Volga-Finnic peoples , who were gradually assimilated by Russians; beginning with the Merya and the Muroma early in the 2nd millennium AD. In the 13th to 14th century , the Russification of
23349-535: The other 14 Republics. The new rule was accompanied by a statement that Russian was a "second native language" for all Soviet citizens and "the only means of participation in social life across the nation." The Councils of Ministers of the Republics across the USSR enacted resolutions based on Decree No. 835. Other aspects of Russification contemplated that native languages would gradually be removed from newspapers, radio and television in favor of Russian. Thus, until
23530-515: 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
23711-461: 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,
23892-446: 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
24073-532: The partitioning of Kievan Rus. The mentality behind Russification when applied to these groups differed from that applied to others, in that they were claimed to be part of the All-Russian or Triune Russian nation by the Russian Imperial government and by subscribers to Russophilia . Russification competed with contemporary nationalist movements in Ukraine and Belarus that were developing during
24254-453: 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
24435-400: The peoples of the USSR" that an individual could "use fluently" (свободно владеть). It is speculated that the explicit goal of the new question on the "second language" was to monitor the spread of Russian as the language of internationality communication. Each of the official homelands within the Soviet Union was regarded as the only homeland of the titular nationality and its language, while
24616-459: 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
24797-418: 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
24978-653: The principle that Russia is a multinational state and will only marginalize them further. The amendments were welcomed by Russian nationalists , such as Konstantin Malofeev and Nikolai Starikov . The changes in Constitution were preceded by "Strategy of government's national policy of Russian Federation" issued in December 2018, which stated that "all-Russian civic identity is founded on Russia cultural dominant, inherent to all nations of Russian Federation". With
25159-479: 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
25340-472: 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 ,
25521-407: The psychological torture of mock shooting ceremonies. Rokossovsky never discussed his trial and imprisonment with his family. He told his daughter Ariadne that since then, he always kept a gun, because he would not surrender alive if they came to arrest him again. He was reinstated in the Communist Party in 1940. In his famous " secret speech " of 1956, Nikita Khrushchev , spoke about the purges and
25702-495: The quarters of his division to become slovenly, failing to conduct training, and leading his division out into bad weather causing losses of horses and encouraging sickness among his troops. When Rokossovsky was arrested by the NKVD , his wife and daughter were sent into internal exile. His wife Julia took odd jobs to support her and their daughter, but she was repeatedly fired when it was discovered that her husband had been arrested as
25883-456: The rank he had held previous to his arrest, Major General Funck 's 7th Panzer Division from the 3rd Panzer Group arrived at Yartsevo behind Smolensk. The next day motorized infantry from the 2nd Panzer Group forced most of the Soviet defenders from Smolensk, reducing the gap between 2nd and 3rd Panzer Groups to less than 20 kilometers. The 16th , 19th and 20th Soviet armies were threatened with impending encirclement and now strung out along
26064-522: The rapidly expanding Soviet army, returned Rokossovsky to the command of the 5th Cavalry Corps at the rank of colonel. Subsequently, the 5th Cavalry Corps participated in the occupation of Bessarabia and he was soon promoted to the rank of a major general and given the command of the 9th Mechanized Corps , as part of M.I. Potapov's 5th Army under Mikhail Kirponos , commander of the Kiev Military District , which would later be renamed
26245-488: The regime was trying to establish its power and legitimacy throughout the former Russian empire, it went about constructing regional administrative units, recruiting non-Russians into leadership positions, and promoting non-Russian languages in government administration, the courts, the schools, and the mass media. The slogan then established was that local cultures should be "socialist in content but national in form." That is, these cultures should be transformed to conform with
26426-535: The release of the latest census in 2022, results showed a catastrophic decline in the number of many ethnic groups, particularly peoples of the Volga region. Between 2010 and 2022, the number of people identifying as ethnic Mari dropped by 22.6%, from 548,000 to 424,000 people. Ethnic Chuvash and Udmurts dropped by 25% and 30% respectively. More vulnerable groups like the Mordvins and Komi-Permyaks saw even larger declines, dropping by 35% and 40% respectively,
26607-491: 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
26788-458: The six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on the Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and
26969-401: The special place of the Russian language as the "language of inter-nationality communication" (язык межнационального общения) in the USSR. Use of the term "inter-nationality" (межнациональное) rather than the more conventional "international" (международное) focused on the special internal role of Russian language rather than on its role as a language of international discourse. That Russian was
27150-572: The sudden appearance of the 7th Panzer at Yartsevo. This ad hoc operational group was to defend the bridgeheads of the Vop river , a tributary of the Dnepr, and prevent the southern and northern wings of the Panzer envelopment from converging at the Dnepr. Collapse seemed imminent. Stalin, unmoved, reiterated his demand to Timoshenko that Smolensk should not be surrendered and called the "evacuation attitude" of
27331-679: 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
27512-459: 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
27693-477: The theoretical plane, the Communist Party's official doctrine was of eventual national differences and nationalities as such would disappear. In official party doctrine as it was reformulated in the Third Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union introduced by Nikita Khrushchev at the 22nd Party Congress in 1961, although the program stated that ethnic distinctions would eventually disappear and
27874-928: The time, the Order of the Red Banner . In 1921, he commanded the 35th Independent Cavalry Regiment stationed in Irkutsk and played an important role in bringing Damdin Sükhbaatar , the founder of the Mongolian People's Republic , to power. Roman von Ungern-Sternberg , a legendary " White Russian " general, adventurer and mystic, allegedly believed he was the reincarnation of Genghis Khan and had driven Chinese occupying forces out of Mongolia in 1920. He set himself up as dictator in Outer Mongolia . The next summer, when Ungern-Sternberg moved to capture
28055-557: The titular nationality of their republic – not Russian. More generally, patterns of linguistic and ethnic assimilation (Russification) were complex and cannot be accounted for by any single factor such as educational policy. Also relevant were the traditional cultures and religions of the groups, their residence in urban or rural areas, their contact with and exposure to the Russian language and to ethnic Russians, and other factors. Defunct The enforced Russification of Russia's remaining indigenous minorities continued in Russia after
28236-528: The turnabout in Ukraine in 1933, a purge of Veli İbraimov and his leadership in the Crimean ASSR in 1929 for "national deviation" led to the Russianization of government, education, and the media and to the creation of a special alphabet for Crimean Tatar to replace the Latin alphabet. Of the two dangers that Joseph Stalin had identified in 1923, now bourgeois nationalism (local nationalism)
28417-786: 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
28598-511: 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
28779-457: The war, the leading role of the Russian people in the Soviet family of nations and nationalities was promoted by Stalin and his successors. This shift was most clearly underscored by Communist Party General Secretary Stalin's Victory Day toast to the Russian people in May 1945: I would like to raise a toast to the health of our Soviet people and, before all, the Russian people. I drink, before all, to
28960-562: Was a high school teacher who was fluent in four languages and who had studied Greek mythology . They married in 1923. Their daughter Ariadna was born in 1925. In 1924 and 1925 Rokossovsky attended the Leningrad Higher Cavalry School, where he first met Georgy Zhukov . He was reassigned to Mongolia, where he was a trainer for the Mongolian People's Army . Soon after, while serving in the Special Red Banner Far Eastern Army under Vasily Blyukher , he took part in
29141-594: Was able to organize active operations, unlike most sectors of the front where the German assault was met with operational paralysis, and bought time to reorganize defense along the line of the old Polish border. Sporadic attempts were made to close the widening gap between the Soviet 5th and 6th Armies, as the Germans advanced on Kiev, but the Soviet tank forces were but a fraction of their former strength. By 7 July, Rokossovsky's 9th Mechanized Corps had been reduced to 64 tanks, out of its original complement of 316. While Rokossovsky and his fellow Mechanized Corps commanders of
29322-583: Was also seen as a move by Putin to "build identity in Russian society". Protests and petitions against the bill by either civic society, groups of public intellectuals or regional governments came from Tatarstan (with attempts for demonstrations suppressed), Chuvashia , Mari El , North Ossetia , Kabardino-Balkaria, the Karachays , the Kumyks , the Avars , Chechnya , and Ingushetia . Although
29503-468: Was among the first to realize the potential of armoured assault . He was an early supporter of the creation of a strong armoured corps for the Red Army, as championed by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky in his theory of " deep operations ". Rokossovsky held senior commands until August 1937 when he became caught up in Joseph Stalin 's Great Purge and was accused of being a spy. His association with
29684-473: Was branded a traitor, imprisoned and tortured. After Soviet failures in the Winter War of 1939–1940, Rokossovsky was taken out of prison and reinstated due to an urgent need for experienced officers. Following Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Rokossovsky played key roles in the defense of Moscow (1941–1942) and the counter-offensives at Stalingrad (1942–1943) and Kursk (1943). He
29865-516: Was easier for his fellow troops to pronounce who were in the 5th Kargopol Dragoon Regiment. On joining the Kargopolsky 5th Dragoon Regiment, Rokossovsky soon showed himself a talented soldier and leader. He served in the cavalry throughout the war, ending with the rank of a junior non-commissioned officer. He was wounded twice during the war and awarded the Cross of St George . In 1917, he joined
30046-405: 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
30227-421: 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
30408-523: Was instrumental in planning and executing part of Operation Bagration (1944)—one of the most decisive Red Army successes of the war—for which he was made a Marshal of the Soviet Union. After the war, Rokossovsky became Defence Minister and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers in the newly-established Polish People's Republic . Forced out of office in Poland in 1956 after Władysław Gomułka became
30589-587: Was likely referring implicitly to Rokossovsky when he stated, "suffice to say that those of them who managed to survive, despite severe tortures to which they were subjected in the prisons, have from the first war days shown themselves real patriots and heroically fought for the glory of the Fatherland". After his trial Rokossovsky was sent to the Kresty Prison in Leningrad, where he remained until he
30770-573: Was offered in 35 non-Russian languages of the peoples of the USSR, just over half the number in the early 1930s. In most of these languages, schooling was not offered for the complete ten-year curriculum. For example, within the Russian SFSR in 1958–59, full 10-year schooling in the native language was offered in only three languages: Russian, Tatar , and Bashkir . And some nationalities had minimal or no native-language schooling. By 1962–1963, among non-Russian nationalities that were indigenous to
30951-478: Was ordered to Moscow on 13 July to take command of the remnants of the 4th Army where he was to serve under Marshal Timoshenko who had replaced the disgraced Pavlov as the Western Front commander on 2 July, shortly after he and the majority of his staff had been tried and shot in the wake of the disaster at the frontier. On 15 July, the same day that Rokossovsky was restored to the rank of lieutenant general,
31132-614: Was populated by many minority groups, and forcing them to accept the Russian culture was an attempt to prevent self-determination tendencies and separatism. In the 19th century, Russian settlers on traditional Kazakh land (misidentified as Kyrgyz at the time) drove many of the Kazakhs over the border to China. Russification was extended to non-Muscovite ethnographic groups that composed former Kievan Rus , namely Ukrainians and Belarusians , whose vernacular language and culture developed differently from that of Muscovy due to separation after
31313-479: Was put out of action; dispersed, captured or killed. Of its initial complement of 625,000 soldiers, 290,000 were taken prisoner and 1,500 guns and 2,500 tanks were captured or destroyed. By 30 June the Germans had reached the approaches of the Dnepr river bend where the river departs from its east–west flow, and heads south. The way was open to the strategically important city of Smolensk , where Marshal Simon Timoshenko
31494-437: Was reassembling the shattered Western Front on a new defense line. The Battle of Smolensk commenced on 10 July when Army Group Center began advancing on a broad front to the north and south banks of the Dnepr river, just beyond the bend where it begins its southward flow. The 9th Army attacked north-east toward Veliki Luki . The 3rd Panzer Group under General Hermann Hoth struck east at Vitebsk and then attacked along
31675-433: Was released without explanation on 22 March 1940. His release coincided with a relaxation of the Great Purge ushered in by the execution of NKVD chief Nikolay Yezhov on 4 February 1940, who was replaced by Lavrentiy Beria . Semyon Timoshenko , who had been named People's Commissar for Defence of the Soviet Union after the debacle of the Winter War and was in urgent need of experienced officers to fill command posts for
31856-413: Was said to be a greater threat than Great Russian chauvinism (great power chauvinism). In 1937, Faizullah Khojaev and Akmal Ikramov were removed as leaders of the Uzbek SSR , and in 1938, during the third great Moscow show trial , convicted and subsequently put to death for alleged anti-Soviet nationalist activities. After Stalin, an ethnic Georgian, became the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union,
32037-443: Was the commander of the 7th Samara Cavalry Division, Timoshenko served as his superior Corps commander and Zhukov was a brigade commander under Rokossovsky in his division. Both became principal actors in his life during World War II , where he served directly under each at different times. Rokossovsky was noted for having a rivalry with Zhukov throughout World War II. He commented on Zhukov's character in an official report : Has
32218-402: 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
32399-421: Was undertaken to define the official territories of the non-Russian populations within the Soviet Union. The federal system conferred the highest status to the titular nationalities of union republics, and lower status to the titular nationalities of autonomous republics, autonomous provinces, and autonomous okrugs. In all, some 50 nationalities had a republic, province, or okrug of which they held nominal control in
32580-463: Was visiting the headquarters. Zhukov insisted that the counter-attack continue against any counterarguments. As a result, Rokossovsky's command was bombarded with conflicting orders. According to Lieutenant-General Dmitry Ryabyshev , Rokossovsky "expressed no ambivalence about the proposed counteroffensive" and refused a direct order, effectively ending the dispute between Zhukov and Kirponos: We had once again received an order to counterattack. However,
32761-416: Was wooded and swampy, keeping the German advance to the road. The artillery Regiment of the 20th Tank division deployed its newly issued 85mm guns to cover the road and with direct fire repulsed the advancing Panzers. The battles around Lutsk, Dubno and Brody fought by the 8th, 9th and 19th Mechanized Corps were most notable among Soviet operations in the early days of Barbarossa because the Southwestern Front
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