108-633: Lenin Volga–Don Shipping Canal ( Russian : Волго-Донской судоходный канал имени, В. И. Ленина, Volga-Donskoy soudokhodniy kanal imeni V. I. Lenina , abbreviated ВДСК, VDSK ) is a ship canal in Russia . It connects the Volga and the Don at their closest points. Opened in 1952, its length is 101 km (63 mi), 45 km (28 mi) of which is through rivers and reservoirs . The canal forms
216-674: 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
324-519: 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
432-766: A canal to replace the portage after 1500, first by the Ottomans during the 16th century, then by the Russian Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries, and finally, more successfully, by the Soviet Union in the 20th. In 1569, the Ottoman Empire attempted to connect the Volga and Don rivers via a canal. The Ottomans wanted to create a maritime link to Central Asia (especially the cities of Bukhara , Khwarazm and Samarkand ) to facilitate trade. Together with
540-664: 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) Treaty of the Pruth The Treaty of the Pruth was signed on the banks of the river Prut between the Ottoman Empire and the Tsardom of Russia on 23 July 1711 ending the Russo-Turkish War of 1710–1711 with the assistance of Peter Shafirov . The treaty
648-558: 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
756-484: 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
864-539: 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 the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian
972-588: 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
1080-622: 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
1188-715: A part of the Unified Deep Water System of European Russia . Together with the lower Volga and the lower Don, the canal provides the shortest navigable connection between the Caspian Sea and the world's oceans via the Sea of Azov , the Black Sea , and the Mediterranean Sea . There has been a trade and military route between the Volga and Don rivers since early human history. The presence of
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#17327569764501296-560: A potential campaign of religious and political propaganda by Russian agents amongst Ottoman Christians to successfully convince the Sultan to not reinstate a Russian ambassador and embassy, and to instead maintain diplomats who could be imprisoned in times of war with Russia. This was a successful smear campaign that prevented Russian merchants from obtaining capitulations for merchants to trade in and make profit in Ottoman ports. This enabled
1404-462: A proposed Suez Canal , the Volga–Don canal would also allow Central Asian Muslims to perform pilgrimage to Mecca . According to most historians, the Ottomans managed to dig one-third of the canal before work was abandoned because of adverse weather. Other historians argue that the Ottomans merely leveled the ground so they could haul ships between the two rivers. In the end, the Ottomans retreated from
1512-526: 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
1620-584: A reduced Russian presence in Ukraine and Crimean regions, as well as the return of King Charles to Sweden to continue the Great Northern War. The Ottomans also demanded the return of Dimitrie Cantemir, the exiled Voivode of Moldavia. Although Peter the Great agreed to all other demands, he refused to return Cantemir, on the basis that Cantemir had fled his camp. Notably, Charles was not present in
1728-516: A significant retinue. The treaty primarily stipulated the return of the strategic fortress of Azov to the Ottoman Empire. The fortress was taken from the Ottomans in 1700 through the signing of the Treaty of Constantinople . Additionally, the treaty stipulated the destruction of several key Russian fortresses, listed as follows: The Russians also lost the right to a permanent ambassador in
1836-539: 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,
1944-481: 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
2052-401: 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
2160-610: 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
2268-599: Is also taken from the canal for irrigation. Cargo transported from the Don region to the Volga includes coal from Donetsk in Ukraine , minerals, building materials, and grain. From the Volga to the Don, cargo includes lumber , pyrites , and petroleum products (carried mostly by Volgotanker boats). Tourist cruisers travel in both directions. The canal and the Tsimlyansky water-engineering system (whose chief architect
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#17327569764502376-488: 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
2484-624: 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
2592-573: 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
2700-564: 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
2808-603: Is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to
2916-762: 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
3024-402: 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
3132-569: 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
3240-585: 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
3348-494: Is the Varverovskoye (Barbarian) Reservoir between locks 9 and 10, 88 m (289 ft) above the Volga and 44 m (144 ft) above the Don river. It uses nine single-chamber canal locks on the Volga slope to raise and lower ships 88 m (289 ft), and four canal locks of the same kind on the Don slope that raise/lower ships 44 m (144 ft) from river height. The locks are smaller overall than those on
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3456-518: 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
3564-722: Is written: "Whatever Our Vice-Chancellor will generate and decide, that will be strong and indisputable." In his instruction, Peter the Great emphasised his willingness to cede to the Sublime Porte the territories and fortresses won in the Azov Campaigns of 1695–1696 and confirmed by the Treaty of Constantinople in 1700. Peter the Great was also willing to cede to the Swedes Livonia , Pskov , and other provinces, and to recognise Stanisław Leszczyński as King of Poland . There were several major influences during
3672-470: 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
3780-945: 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
3888-413: 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
3996-530: The Dnieper . Both empires were forbidden from constructing fortresses across their extensive borders. However, the issue of Russian access to the Black Sea remained a critical and longstanding issue. The border established after the work of both border commissions in 1714 was once again confirmed in the eternal Peace Treaty of Constantinople in 1724. It was only during the reign of Empress Anna Ioannovna that
4104-527: The Great Northern War , the project was halted. In 1711 Russia left Azov under the terms of the Treaty of the Pruth , and Peter the Great lost all interest in the canal, which was abandoned and fell into ruin. Over time, other projects for connecting the two rivers were proposed, but none were attempted. However, the horse-drawn Dubovsko-Kachalinsky railway and the Volga–Don railway — now part of
4212-541: The South Eastern Railway — were built in 1846 and 1852, respectively, to link the Volga and the Don at the shortest distance. They were 68km and 73km long respectively. The construction of today's Volga–Don Canal, designed by Sergey Zhuk 's Hydroproject Institute, began prior to the Second World War , which interrupted the process. Construction works continued from 1948 to 1952 and the canal
4320-584: 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
4428-730: The Unified Deep Water Transportation System of the European part of the USSR . The canal begins at the Volga's Sarepta backwater ( 48°31′10″N 44°33′10″E / 48.51944°N 44.55278°E / 48.51944; 44.55278 ( start ) , the location of Lock No. 1 and the gateway arch), south of Volgograd . It ends in the Tsimlyansk Reservoir of the Don at the town of Kalach-na-Donu . The canal's highest elevation
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4536-641: 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
4644-568: The Volga Dam , as opposed to the existing Volga–Don Canal that starts south (downstream) of the dam. This would have reduced the number of locks traversed by ships coming from the Volgograd Reservoir, or from other Volga or Kama ports farther north, on their way to the Don. The project was abruptly cancelled to cut expenditure on 1 August 1990, by which time more than 40 percent of its funds had already been spent. Since then most of
4752-575: The Volga–Baltic Waterway , and two other connections. In the 1980s, construction started on a second canal between the rivers. The new canal, dubbed Volga–Don 2 ( Russian : Волго-Дон 2 ; 48°56′37″N 44°30′25″E / 48.94361°N 44.50694°E / 48.94361; 44.50694 ( Volgo-Don 2 start ) ) was to have started from the township of Yerzovka on the Volgograd Reservoir , north (upstream) of
4860-519: 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
4968-471: 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
5076-736: The General was sent away, he was ordered to write a strong letter of complaint to the Swedish ambassador to the Sultan Thomas Funck, dated 29 August 1711. Increasing tensions between the Grand Vizier Baltaci Mehmet Pasha and King Charles XII forced the monarch to command another letter of complaint dated 4 October 1711. This letter detailed the true nature of the peace terms to the Sultan for the first time, and combined with complaints from Devlet II Giray to
5184-409: 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,
5292-454: The Great 's reign consisted of a period of increasing western influence and orientation, characterised by establishing the capital of Russia as Saint Petersburg in 1703, opening direct naval links to the west. The Pruth River Campaign erupted as a direct result of the defeat of King Charles XII at the Battle of Poltava in the summer of 1709 and his retreat into the Ottoman Empire. In February 1710, General Stanislaw Poniatowski , father of
5400-468: 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
5508-417: The King tried in vain to make it to the negotiations, favouring a renewed Ottoman campaign to capture Kiev and Ukraine. During the engagement, Ottoman forces surrounded and cut off the large Russian army, leading to their eventual surrender on 22 July. The Russian army was fully surrounded by 22 July, leading Peter to open peace negotiations with Grand Vizier Baltaci Memhet Pasha. The situation that arose gave
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#17327569764505616-411: 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
5724-475: The Ottoman Court refused. These repetitive calls and aggressive diplomacy on behalf of King Charles XII lead the Ottomans to declare war on Russia on 20 November 1710. Concurrently, Russia and Moldavia (now Moldova ) signed an agreement which guaranteed Russian military access through Moldavia and promised troops and logistics. A Russian army of 80,000 men advanced down the Pruth River in the summer of 1711, utilising Moldavian support and military access. The army
5832-402: The Ottoman Porte. Upon the signing of the Peace Treaty, Peter P. Shafirov and M.M. Sheremetev (the son of the Field Marshall General), were taken to Constantinople, where they were to remain until the full implementation by Russia of its obligations. Both Peter P. Shafirov and M.M Sheremetev hoped to leave the Ottoman Empire following the letters of ratification, but were held against their will by
5940-441: The Ottoman camp, despite being one of the principal reasons why the two empires were at war. Instead, Charles sent General Stanislaw Poniatowski as the emissary of both King Charles of Sweden and then former King Stanisław Leszczyński of Poland, who had been exiled after the defeat of Charles at the Battle of Poltava. Poniatowski sent several letters from the Ottoman camp back to Charles who was at this point residing in Bender with
6048-439: The Ottomans a dominant negotiating position, which was further aggravated by the calls for harsher terms by General Stanisław Poniatowski – the emissary of King Charles XII. Although Field Marshal Boris Sheremetev was nominally in charge of the Russian Forces, Peter the Great was supreme military commander, and ordered his Vice Chancellor, Baron Peter P. Shafirov to negotiate peace with the Turks. In his diploma of authorisation
6156-807: 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
6264-458: 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
6372-405: 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
6480-428: The Sublime Porte regarding the Grand Vizier's weak negotiating and his ill treatment of the Crimean Khan saw the downfall of Baltaci Mehmet Pasha and the return of open hostility with the Russian Tsardom. Whilst the Treaty ended the immediate military conflict, the larger geopolitical conflict was still very active. The expansion of Russia into the Caucus and Ukraine regions threatened Ottoman control in these areas. Over
6588-413: The Turks until the border commission had been completed. The two remained in Istanbul for several years, and acted as diplomats and negotiators on behalf of Peter the Great. They were both imprisoned for as long as 6 months in the Yedikule prison and were eager to return home, using every opportunity available to speak with both Ottoman and Russian diplomats to hurry the peace process. Moreover, terms of
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#17327569764506696-403: 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
6804-464: The Volga River, but can handle ships of up to 5,000 tonnes cargo capacity . The smallest locks are 145 m (476 ft) long, 17 m (56 ft) wide, and 3.6 m (12 ft) deep. The maximum allowed vessel is 141 m (463 ft) length, 16.8 m (55 ft) beam, and 3.6 m (12 ft) draught (the Volgo–Don Max Class ). The canal is filled from the Don, with three powerful pumping stations to maintain water levels. Water
6912-405: The Volga–Don Canal in 2004. An alternative source claims 8.05 million tonnes of cargo was transported through the canal in 2006. Most of the cargo was moved from the east to the west: 7.20 million tonnes, and only 0.85 million tonnes the other way. Just over half of all cargo was oil or oil products (4.14 million tonnes), predominantly shipped from the Caspian region. It was reported in 2007 that in
7020-483: The aggressive expansion of the Swedish Empire throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. Sweden’s aggressive expansion in Scandinavia forced a coalition of Eastern European nations to form and contain them, including the Tsardom of Russia. After defeat at the Battle of Narva in 1700, Russia was invaded by King Charles XII as part of the Great Northern War . The invasion of Russia was unsuccessful, and many of Charles’ army died of disease and attrition. In addition, Peter
7128-405: The area and Russia promised to respect trade and pilgrimage routes to Central Asia. Peter the Great ordered the earliest Russian attempts to connect the Volga and Don rivers. After capturing Azov in 1696, he decided to build a canal — later named Petrov Val — on the Ilovlya River (a left tributary of the Don) and the Kamyshinka river (right tributary of the Volga). It was much shorter than
7236-403: 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
7344-422: The campaign was the four-day Battle of Stănilești, which began on 18 July 1711. The two armies engaged on the floodplains of the Pruth River in an unprepared battle. The battle was so unexpected that General Stanislaw Poniatowski hurriedly wrote to King Charles XII during the engagement on small pieces of paper and dated it 1710 rather than 1711. His letters were delivered to the Swedish Monarch by Captain Busquet and
7452-417: The canal's annual cargo throughput from 16.5 million tonnes to 30 million tonnes. The other option—which had greater support from Kazakhstan , which would be either canal's major customer—was to build the so-called Eurasia Canal along a more southerly route in the Kuma–Manych Depression , some of which is the much-shallower but existing Manych Ship Canal . The southern route would require less earthwork than
7560-460: 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
7668-416: The events culminated in the signing of the Treaty of Adrianople in 1713. The Treaty confirmed the stipulations agreed upon by the Treaty of the Pruth and added a special clause to deliminate the borders between the two states. The Treaty of Adrianople saw the area surrounding Azov completely returned to the Turks, while Peter the Great 'took his hand away' from Ukraine and Zaporizhian Sich on the right bank of
7776-413: 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,
7884-456: 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
7992-469: The first 55 years of the canal's operations 450,000 vessels had passed through carrying 336 million tonnes of cargo. Recent cargo volume stood at 12 million tonnes per year. In 2016, the core of Belarusian nuclear power plant VVER-1200 , which weighed 330 tonnes, was 13 meters high, and 4.5 meters in diameter, was transferred to its destination by exploiting Tsimlyansk Reservoir , the Volga–Don Canal,
8100-707: The first option and would provide a speedier connection between the Caspian and the Sea of Azov. It would also require fewer locks than the Volga–Don, as elevation differences to be engineered in the Kuma–Manych Depression are smaller. Download coordinates as: Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It
8208-575: The fortified settlement Tanais in the Don River delta since the time of the Bosporan Kingdom , c. 438 BC– 370 AD, strongly suggests the route was sufficiently notable to be fortified for over two thousand years. The Sarkel fortress on the left bank of the lower Don was the main control of this Volga trade route . The Don–Volga portage got its name from its trade importance 1000 years ago. There were several attempts to build
8316-570: The foundations of a Turkish-Swedish alliance (directed against Russia), (iii) to bring Turkey into a war against Russia; (iv) to prevent the recognition of Augustus II as King of Poland by the Sublime Porte ; (v) to secure the 'escort' for the Swedish King in conformity with the former promises of Sultan Ahemet III and (vi) to arrange a money loan from the Sublime Porte. Despite repetitive calls from Russia to extradite King Charles,
8424-692: 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
8532-480: 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
8640-512: The issue was resolved and the borders between the two empires were finally settled. In England, the treaty was received relatively well. The English Levant Company , which had significant vested trading interest in the east had become increasingly worried about the influence of the Russian Navy on their Eastern profits. The English ambassador Sir Robert Sutton drew the Porte's attention to
8748-569: The last Polish King, was sent to Constantinople by King Charles XII as his envoy after it became clear to the monarch that he would have no safe passage through Poland back to Sweden to continue the Great Northern War. In his role as envoy, the General was to accomplish the following tasks: (i) to work for the deposition of the Grand Vizier Tchorlulu Ali Pasha, who was considered friendly to the Russians, (ii) to prepare
8856-635: The modern canal, connecting a gap of just 4 kilometers (2.5 mi), but was abandoned in 1701 because of a lack of resources and other problems. He initiated a second attempt, the so-called Ivanovsky Canal between Yepifan and Ivan-Ozero , under the administration of Knyaz Matvey Gagarin . However it was too shallow, as it linked the upper Don and the upper Volga via the tributaries Oka River , Upa River , and Shat River in present-day Tula Oblast . Between 1702 and 1707, twenty-four locks were constructed, and in 1707, about 300 ships passed through with difficulty. In 1709 owing to financial difficulties from
8964-515: The next two years, several wars were declared. On 9 December 1711, a new conflict was declared, although there was no military action and the conflict was resolved through the Russian ambassadors in Constantinople. The Turks declared war on Russia again on 31 October 1712 and 13 April 1713 although the conflicts followed similarly to the first, and no military action was conducted. Skilled ambassadors in Constantinople avoided large scale war and
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
9180-515: 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
9288-461: 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,
9396-446: 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
9504-463: The peace negotiations. The Crimean Khan Devlet II Giray argued for harsher terms of surrender on the surrounded Russian army. His reasons for harsher terms were motivated by the increasing threat a united and Imperial Russia posed on the Crimean Khanate and continued Russian expansion south towards the Caucasus mountain range. Together with the exiled King Charles XII of Sweden, he desired
9612-453: 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
9720-459: 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
9828-418: 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
9936-479: 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
10044-472: 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 ,
10152-491: 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
10260-476: The stone and metal in the abandoned canal and locks has been looted. As of 2007–2008, Russian authorities were considering two options for increasing the throughput of navigable waterways between the Caspian basin and the Black Sea. One option, which reuses the name "Volga–Don 2", is to build a second parallel channel ("second thread") of the Volga–Don Canal, equipped with larger locks 300 metres (980 ft) long. This approach would have allowed for an increase in
10368-679: 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
10476-512: 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
10584-479: The treaty included an end to Russian political influence in the Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth , which the Russians increasingly saw within their own sphere of influence. Within the Ottoman Empire, the treaty was received relatively positively. A protracted war with Russia was not considered favourable and would have been a large scale and relatively unsustainable conflict. The influence of Swedish King Charles XII
10692-786: 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
10800-511: 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
10908-660: Was Leonid Polyakov), form part of an architectural ensemble dedicated to the battles for Tsaritsyn during the Russian Civil War and for Stalingrad during the German-Soviet War . The Russian classical composer Sergei Prokofiev wrote the tone poem The Meeting of the Volga and the Don to celebrate its completion. According to the Maritime Board ( Morskaya Kollegiya ) of the Russian government, 10.9 million tonnes of cargo were carried over
11016-534: Was a political victory for the Ottoman Empire. The Treaty stipulated the return of Azov Fortress to the Ottomans, Taganrog and several Russian fortresses were to be demolished, and the Tsar pledged to stop interfering in the affairs of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , which the Russians increasingly saw as under their sphere of influence . The indirect causes of the war can be attributed to
11124-405: 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
11232-421: 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
11340-457: Was led by Peter the Great and Boris Sheremetev and attempted to invade Ottoman occupied Moldavian with the support of exiled ruler ( Voivode ) of Moldavia Dimitrie Cantemir . The campaign was ill-prepared and lacked proper planning and logistic support, and although the Russian army was large and well equipped, it was outmanoeuvred by a 70,000 strong Ottoman army under the command of Grand Vizier Baltacı Mehmet Pasha . The decisive moment of
11448-540: Was opened on 1 June 1952. The canal and its facilities were built by about 900,000 workers including some 100,000 German POWs and 100,000 gulag prisoners. A day spent at the construction yard was counted as three days in prison, which spurred the prisoners to work. Several convicts were even awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour upon their release. Upon completion, the Volga–Don Canal became an important link in
11556-451: Was significant however and he continued to live in the Ottoman court. Moreover, he called for another war to reclaim land lost to Russia in the Great Northern War and harsher treaty stipulations on Peter the Great. Particularly, he sent General Stanislaw Poniatowski with the Ottoman forces in an attempt to influence the eventual treaty. He was however, sent away from the negotiations for his aggressive and war mongering negotiating tactics. After
11664-402: 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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