154-571: Kronstadt ( Russian : Кроншта́дт , romanized : Kronshtadt , IPA: [krɐnˈʂtat] ) is a Russian port city in Kronshtadtsky District of the federal city of Saint Petersburg , located on Kotlin Island , 30 km (19 mi) west of Saint Petersburg, near the head of the Gulf of Finland . It is linked to the former Russian capital by a combination levee - causeway -seagate,
308-649: 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
462-510: 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
616-510: A degree of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute. The Crimean War was one of the first conflicts in which military forces used modern technologies such as explosive naval shells , railways and telegraphs . The war was also one of the first to be documented extensively in written reports and in photographs . The war quickly became
770-807: A double submarine net would be laid from Porkkala to Naissaar in Operation Walross . The blockade of the Gulf of Finland turned out to be 100% effective. But in 1944, when Finland signed a peace treaty with the Soviet Union, one of the conditions was that the Soviets could locate one naval base in Finland at Porkkala. Submarine warfare in the Baltic Sea reached its final stage after peace was reached with Finland. The Baltic Fleet sent more than 125,000 people to serve on shore at
924-532: 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) Crimean War Total: 165,363 dead 45,770 combat deaths 119,593 non-combat deaths The Crimean War was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between the Russian Empire and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire , France ,
1078-511: A free hand in settling its problems with the Ottoman Empire, the " sick man of Europe ". However, Britain could not tolerate Russian dominance of Ottoman affairs, which would challenge its domination of the eastern Mediterranean. Starting with Peter the Great in the early 1700s, after centuries of Ottoman northward expansion and Crimean-Nogai raids , Russia began a southwards expansion across
1232-558: 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
1386-479: 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
1540-572: 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
1694-607: 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
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#17331064267981848-565: A powerful Imperial Russian Navy . Taylor stated the British perspective: The Crimean war was fought for the sake of Europe rather than for the Eastern question; it was fought against Russia, not in favour of Turkey.... The British fought Russia out of resentment and supposed that her defeat would strengthen the European Balance of Power. Because of "British commercial and strategic interests in
2002-494: A professor of history at Moscow University , gave Nicholas I a summary of Russia's policy towards the Slavs in the war. Nicholas' answer was filled with grievances against the West. Nicholas shared Pogodin's sense that Russia's role as the protector of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire was not understood and that Russia was unfairly treated by the West. Nicholas especially approved of
2156-492: A prominent Kronstadt landmark, was destroyed on Communist orders in 1932. St John of Kronstadt , one of the most venerated Russian saints, served there as priest from 1855 to 1908. The controversial dam that took 30 years to build (1980–2011) now links Kotlin island to the mainland from north and south, not only acts as part of the flood defences, but lets through shipping and completes the St Petersburg ring-road system, across
2310-516: 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
2464-687: A show of force by sending the ship of the line Charlemagne to the Black Sea and thereby violated the London Straits Convention. The gunboat diplomacy show of force, together with money , induced Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid I to accept a new treaty confirming France and the Catholic Church's supreme authority over Catholic holy places, including the Church of the Nativity , which had been held by
2618-582: A southern power had begun in earnest in 1776, when Catherine placed Potemkin in charge of New Russia (Novorossiia), the sparsely populated territories newly conquered from the Ottomans on the Black Sea’s northern coastline, and ordered him to colonize the area". When Russia conquered those groups and gained possession of their territories, the Ottoman Empire lost its buffer zone against Russian expansion, and both empires came into direct conflict. The conflict with
2772-578: A strong land army, made it possible to strike at Russia. "With the help of French infantry, it was possible to overturn Russia's positions with one blow" In February 1853, the British government of Prime Minister Lord Aberdeen reappointed Lord Stratford as British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Having resigned the ambassadorship in January, he had been replaced by Colonel Rose as chargé d'affaires . Lord Stratford then turned around, sailed back to Constantinople, arriving there on 5 April 1853 and convinced
2926-782: A submarine supply ship, the Pamiat Azova . In 1921, a group of naval officers and men, together with soldiers and civilian supporters, rebelled against the Bolshevik government in Soviet Kronstadt. The garrison had previously been a centre of major support for the Bolsheviks, and throughout the Civil War of 1917–1921, the naval forces at Kronstadt had been at the vanguard of the main Bolshevik attacks. Their demands included freedom of speech ,
3080-589: A symbol of logistical, medical and tactical failures and of mismanagement. The reaction in Britain led to a demand for the professionalisation of medicine, most famously achieved by Florence Nightingale , who gained worldwide attention for pioneering modern nursing while she treated the wounded. The Crimean War marked a turning point for the Russian Empire. The war weakened the Imperial Russian Army , drained
3234-527: 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,
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#17331064267983388-475: 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
3542-401: 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
3696-593: 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
3850-647: Is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and
4004-485: 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
4158-613: 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
4312-511: Is deemed to strengthen its position in the East at the expense of the balance of power. We can expect nothing from the West but blind hatred and malice.... ( comment in the margin by Nicholas I : 'This is the whole point'). Russia was militarily weak, technologically backward and administratively incompetent. Despite its grand ambitions toward the south, it had not built its railway network in that direction, and its communications were poor. Its bureaucracy
4466-474: Is icebound for 140–160 days in the year, from the beginning of December to April. A very large proportion of the inhabitants are sailors. On the south side of the city there are three harbours: the large western or merchant harbour, the western flank of which is formed by a great pier joining the fortifications which traverse the breadth of the island on one side. The middle harbour was used chiefly for fitting out and repairing vessels. The eastern or military harbour
4620-563: 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
4774-564: 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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4928-402: 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
5082-569: 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
5236-576: 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
5390-659: Is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and
5544-518: 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
5698-461: 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
5852-966: 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
6006-608: The Battle of the Alma on 20 September 1854. The Russians counterattacked on 25 October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, but the British Army 's forces were seriously depleted as a result. A second Russian counterattack at Inkerman ended in a stalemate. By 1855, the Italian Kingdom of Sardinia sent an expeditionary force to Crimea, siding with France, Britain and
6160-413: 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
6314-652: The English Factory , despite the fact that many of them were Scots. They settled both in Kronstadt and in St Petersburg itself and for a time dominated both inward and outward trade, especially in the reign of Catherine the Great . They became an integral part of British trade and foreign policy through the Board of Trade in London. A number of the British settlers became naturalised Russians. Trading alliances were sharply interrupted by
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6468-540: The February Revolution , the sailors of Petrograd joined the revolution and executed their officers, thus gaining a reputation as dedicated revolutionaries. During the civil war, the sailors participated on the red side , until 1921, when they rebelled against Bolshevik rule in the Kronstadt rebellion . Kronstadt with its supporting forts and minefields was key in protecting Petrograd from foreign forces. Despite this,
6622-626: The Greek Orthodox Church . Tsar Nicholas I then deployed his 4th and 5th Army Corps along the River Danube in Wallachia, as a direct threat to the Ottoman lands south of the river. He had Foreign Minister Count Karl Nesselrode undertake talks with the Ottomans. Nesselrode confided to Seymour: [The dispute over the holy places] had assumed a new character—that the acts of injustice towards
6776-542: The St Petersburg Dam , part of the city's flood defences, which also acts as road access to Kotlin island from the mainland. Founded in the early 18th century by Peter the Great , it became an important international centre of commerce whose trade role was later eclipsed by its strategic significance as the primary maritime defence outpost of the former Russian capital. The main base of the Russian Baltic Fleet
6930-575: 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
7084-652: The United Kingdom , and Sardinia-Piedmont . Geopolitical causes of the war included the decline of the Ottoman Empire (the " Eastern Question "), the expansion of Russia in the preceding Russo-Turkish Wars , and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the balance of power in the Concert of Europe . The flashpoint was a disagreement over the rights of Christian minorities in Palestine , (now divided between Israel and Palestine), then part of
7238-507: 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
7392-443: The abolition of serfdom and overhauls in the justice system, local self-government, education and military service. As the Ottoman Empire steadily weakened during the 19th century, the Russian Empire stood poised to take advantage by expanding southward. In the 1850s, the British and the French Empires were allied with the Ottoman Empire and were determined to prevent that from happening. The historian A. J. P. Taylor argued that
7546-405: 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
7700-410: The Anglo-Ottoman Treaty in 1838 (see Treaty of Balta Liman ). Russia attempted to "honestly" negotiate with the United Kingdom on the partition of the Ottoman Empire and made concessions in order to eliminate all objections from the United Kingdom. "The Tsar Nicholas had always, as we have seen, been anxious to maintain a cordial understanding with England in regard to the Eastern Question, and early in
7854-415: The Baltic Fleet and the infrastructure of the naval dockyard. Several sections of the yard were destroyed, the docks were heavily bombed causing the death of dozens of workers and engineers. Nevertheless, the naval yard continued its work. Despite the siege, the workers persevered with their work, often working 18–20 hours a day. Thanks to the power of the Kronstadt Fortress the destruction of Leningrad, then
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#17331064267988008-412: 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
8162-461: The British ambassador, Stratford Canning, 1st Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe , rejected the most sweeping demands. Russian historian Vinogradov V.N. point out that Menshikov's demands did not go beyond the limits of previous treaties. "The agreement was reached on the administration of church rites of both clergy in respected temples and, secondly, that the tsar rejected the idea of expanding his right of patronage and, in fact, insisted on confirming
8316-441: The Catholic clericalists, as his ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire. Russia disputed that attempted change in authority. Referring to two previous treaties (one from 1757 and the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca from 1774), the Ottomans reversed their earlier decision, renounced the French treaty and declared that Russia was the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Napoleon III responded with
8470-403: The Civic Hospital, the Admiralty (founded in 1785), the arsenal, dockyards and foundries, the School of Marine Engineering, and the English Church. The Kronstadt port was once considered the most fortified port in the world. It still retains some of its old "forts" on small fortified artificial islands. Originally, there were 22 such forts, situated in line with the southern and northern shores of
8624-409: 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,
8778-402: The Greek church which it had been desired to prevent had been perpetrated and consequently that now the object must be to find a remedy for these wrongs. The success of French negotiations at Constantinople was to be ascribed solely to intrigue and violence—violence which had been supposed to be the ultima ratio of kings, being, it had been seen, the means which the present ruler of France was in
8932-573: The Gulf of Finland. Some fortifications were located inside the city itself and one was on the western shore of Kronslot Island, on the other side of the main navigational channel. The construction of the Saint Petersburg Dam led to some of the forts being demolished. The dam, a levee-causeway-Seagate combination also enabled Kronstadt and some of the forts being reached by land. Among the most important surviving forts are: There are daily bus and water tours to Kronstadt from Saint Petersburg . The now demolished older St Andrew Cathedral (1817), once
9086-468: 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
9240-461: The Middle East and India", the British joined the French, "cement[ing] an alliance with Britain and... reassert[ing] its military power". Among those who supported the British strategy were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . In his articles for the New-York Tribune around 1853, Marx saw the Crimean War as a conflict between the democratic ideals of the west that started with the "great movement of 1789" against "Russia and Absolutism". He described
9394-411: 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
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#17331064267989548-477: The Ottoman Empire be placed under his protection. Britain attempted to mediate and arranged a compromise to which Nicholas agreed. When the Ottomans demanded changes to the agreement, Nicholas recanted and prepared for war. In July 1853, Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities (now part of Romania but then under Ottoman suzerainty ). On 16 October [ O.S. 4 October] 1853, having obtained promises of support from France and Britain,
9702-433: The Ottoman Empire also presented a religious issue of importance, as Russia saw itself as the protector of history of the Eastern Orthodox Church under the Ottoman Orthodox Christians , who were legally treated as second-class citizens . The Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856 , promulgated after the war, largely reversed much of the second-class status, most notably the tax that only non-Muslims paid . Britain's immediate fear
9856-441: The Ottoman Empire as a buffer against a pattern of expansionism by the Tsar. Marx and Engels also accused Lord Palmerston of playing along with the interests of Russia and being unserious in preparing for the conflict. Marx believed Palmerston to be bribed by Russia, and shared this belief with David Urquhart . Urquhart, for his part, was a British politician who was a major advocate for the Ottoman Empire. Mikhail Pogodin ,
10010-400: The Ottoman Empire, with the French promoting the rights of Roman Catholics , and Russia promoting those of the Eastern Orthodox Church . The churches worked out their differences with the Ottomans and came to an agreement , but both the French Emperor Napoleon III and the Russian tsar Nicholas I refused to back down. Nicholas issued an ultimatum that demanded the Orthodox subjects of
10164-405: The Ottoman Empire. The front settled into the Siege of Sevastopol , involving brutal conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller military actions took place in the Caucasus (1853–1855), the White Sea (July–August 1854) and the North Pacific (1854–1855). Sevastopol finally fell after eleven months, after the French assaulted Fort Malakoff . Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion by
10318-428: The Ottoman Sublime Porte in February 1853. By previous treaties, the sultan had committed "to protect the (Eastern Orthodox) Christian religion and its churches". Menshikov demanded a Russian protectorate over all 12 million Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire with control of the Orthodox Church's hierarchy. A compromise was reached regarding Orthodox access to the Holy Land, but the Sultan, strongly supported by
10472-440: The Ottoman naval forces at the Battle of Navarino . In 1830, Greece became independent after ten years of war and the Russo-Turkish War (1828–29) . The Treaty of Adrianople (1829) granted Russian and Western European commercial ships free passage through the Black Sea straits . Also, Serbia received autonomy, and the Danubian Principalities ( Moldavia and Wallachia ) became territories under Russian protection. France took
10626-419: The Ottomans and prevent both from forming an anti-Russian alliance. Nicholas began courting Britain by means of conversations with Seymour in January and February 1853. Nicholas insisted that he no longer wished to expand the Russian Empire but that he had an obligation to the Christian communities in the Ottoman Empire. He next dispatched a highly-abrasive diplomat, Prince Menshikov , on a special mission to
10780-420: The Ottomans declared war on Russia. Led by Omar Pasha , the Ottomans fought a strong defensive campaign and stopped the Russian advance at Silistra (now in Bulgaria ). A separate action on the fort town of Kars , in the Ottoman Empire, led to a siege, and an Ottoman attempt to reinforce the garrison was destroyed by a Russian fleet at the Battle of Sinop in November 1853. Fearing the growth of influence of
10934-438: The Russian Empire, the British and French fleets entered the Black Sea in January 1854. They moved north to Varna in June 1854 and arrived just in time for the Russians to abandon Silistra. In the Baltic , near the Russian capital of Saint Petersburg , an Anglo-French fleet instituted a naval blockade and bottled up the outnumbered Russian Baltic Fleet , causing economic damage to Russia by blockading trade while also forcing
11088-807: 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
11242-458: 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
11396-640: The Russians had given up their privileged position in the Ottoman Empire and their control of the Straits, all in the hope of improving relations with Britain and isolating France". But Britain after 1838 was interested in preserving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire and rejected all Russian proposals. "The fall of the Ottoman Empire was not, however, a requirement of British policy in the East. A weak Ottoman state best suited British interests". French Emperor Napoleon III 's ambition to restore France's grandeur initiated
11550-512: The Russians to keep a large army guarding St. Petersburg from a potential allied attack. After a minor skirmish at Köstence (now Constanța ), the allied commanders decided to attack Russia's main naval base in the Black Sea, Sevastopol , in Crimea . After extended preparations, allied forces landed on the peninsula in September 1854 and marched their way to a point south of Sevastopol after they had won
11704-579: The Sea Cadet Corps was housed there before being transferred to St Petersburg. From 1798 to 1872 the Navigation School was situated in the former palace. The Kronstadt tide gauge is situated near the former Italian palace. Sea level observations in Saint Petersburg began already in 1703. On Kotlin Island, the main naval fortress of the Russian Empire began observations in 1707. This monitoring
11858-454: 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
12012-621: The Sultan's ministers, who lived in terror of a personal visit from the dictatorial ambassador". Nicholas fumed at "the infernal dictatorship of this Redcliffe" whose name and political ascendancy at the Porte personified for him the whole Eastern Question, The British and the French sent in naval task forces to support the Ottomans, as Russia had prepared to seize the Danubian Principalities . All
12166-563: The Tsar's disquietude are not obscure. Not Turkey alone was threatened by the advance of Ibrahim . The rights secured to Russia by a succession of treaties were also directly jeopardized. The substitution of a virile Albanian dynasty at Constantinople in place of the effete Osmanlis was the last thing desired by the Power which wished, naturally enough, to command the gate into the Mediterranean". Russia
12320-460: 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
12474-403: The West if the war continued, Russia sued for peace in March 1856. France and Britain welcomed the development, owing to the conflict's domestic unpopularity. The Treaty of Paris , signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war. It forbade Russia to base warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent. Christians in the Ottoman Empire gained
12628-657: The anti-aircraft guns of the 1st Air Defence Regiment of the Baltic Fleet. This regiment was situated in the southern forts. During World War II , Kronstadt was subject to several bombing raids by the Luftwaffe . In August 1941 the Luftwaffe began bombing Kronstadt repeatedly. The most notable bombing was Stuka ace Hans-Ulrich Rudel 's sinking of the battleship Marat . To prevent an enemy landing, 13 artillery batteries were established in Kronstadt with nine more batteries outside
12782-403: 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
12936-480: The calculations of the Russian emperor turned out to be erroneous. Britain refused his proposals, it was not possible to prevent the Anglo-French rapprochement, Austria opposed his policy, the Ottoman Empire showed intransigence. On the contrary, a favourable situation was developing for Britain. Britain had great naval power and a powerful economy, but did not have a strong land army. The alliance with France, which had
13090-691: The city is alternatively spelled as Kronshtadt , Cronstadt or Kronštadt . It is derived from German Kronstadt ( lit. ' crown city ' ). The district is referred to as Kronshtadtsky District . Kronstadt was founded by Peter the Great , whose Imperial Russian forces took the island of Kotlin from the Swedes during the Great Northern War in 1703. The first fortifications were inaugurated on 18 May [ O.S. 7 May] 1704. These fortifications, known as Kronshlot [ ru ] (Кроншлот), were constructed very quickly. During
13244-570: The city, on the island of Kotlin. The main lookout was located in the Naval Cathedral . Visual range reached 45 km (28 mi). The coastal defence forces of Kronstadt included two infantry regiments. In late August, the Red Army in the Baltic States was in a critical situation. Tallinn , the main base of the fleet, was in danger and an order to relocate the fleet from Tallinn to Kronstadt
13398-562: 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
13552-399: The cruiser Oleg was torpedoed and sunk by a small motor boat after participating in the bombardment of Krasnaya Gorka fort that had revolted against the Bolsheviks. This was followed on August 18, 1919, by a raid of seven Royal Navy Coastal Motor Boats inside the harbour of Kronstadt itself, damaging the Soviet battleships Petropavlovsk and Andrei Pervozvanny , and sinking
13706-591: The culmination of Russian Neo-Byzantine architecture . The Pyotrovsky Gardens is a park that surrounds the monument to Peter the Great who founded the city. There are a number of historic buildings, such as the Dutch Kitchen and the former Italian Palace , that recall the city's mercantile and military past. Among other public buildings are the Naval Hospital, the British Seamen's Hospital (established in 1867),
13860-466: The decay of the Turkish Empire, and its being a dead body or a sapless trunk, and so forth, is pure and unadulterated nonsense. Given 10 years of peace under European protection, coupled with internal reform, there seemed to him no reason why it should not become again a respectable Power". Orlando Figes has claimed that "The motives of the British in promoting liberal reforms were not just to secure
14014-457: The documents was the result of deliberate decisions: instead of bilateral (none of the great powers recognized this Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi), the new Treaty of London was obligatory for all, it closed the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. In the absence of expansion plans, this was a sound decision". In 1838, Britain lost interest in crushing the Ottoman Empire. On the contrary, after the conclusion of
14168-505: The empire's internal and military weakness, and the commission of atrocities by Ottoman military forces (see Chios massacre ) further undermined the empire. The disbandment of the centuries-old Janissary corps by Sultan Mahmud II on 15 June 1826 ( Auspicious Incident ) helped the empire in the longer term but deprived it of its existing standing army in the short term. In 1827, the Anglo-Franco-Russian fleet destroyed almost all of
14322-559: The end of deportation to work camps, a change in Soviet war politics, and liberation of the soviets ( workers' councils ) from "party control". After brief negotiations, Leon Trotsky (then the Minister of War in the Soviet Government, and the leader of the Red Army ) responded by sending the army to Kronstadt, along with the Cheka . The uprising was thus suppressed following a massacre . In
14476-512: The exit completely from the Gulf of Finland with anti-submarine nets and mines. Despite these efforts, the Soviet submariners continued to attack German ships. In 1942, 29 German vessels were sunk. Submarines cooperated with reconnaissance aircraft in searching for military targets. Soviet submarines had broken through the mine barrages in the Gulf of Finland in 1942. To keep the Soviet submarine force away from Baltic shipping stronger efforts were planned. The minefields would be larger and in addition
14630-630: The expiry of the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi, the London Straits Convention was signed under pressure from the European countries. The new treaty deprived Russia of its right to block warships from passing into the Black Sea in case of war. Thus, the way to the Black Sea was open for British and French warships during a possible Russo-Ottoman conflict. Russian historians tend to view that history as evidence that Russia lacked aggressive plans. The Russian historian V. N. Vinogradov writes: "The signing of
14784-413: 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,
14938-451: 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
15092-697: The first governors of Kronstadt was a veteran of the Royal Scots Navy , Admiral Thomas Gordon who was a refugee in Russia from the Scottish union with England and became chief commander of the port of Kronstadt from 1727 to 1741. Just as Kronstadt became populated and fortified, it attracted merchants from maritime powers most notably, the Dutch, the British and the Germans through the old Hanse connections. The community of British merchants or "factors" came to be known as
15246-432: The following passage: France takes Algeria from Turkey , and almost every year England annexes another Indian principality : none of this disturbs the balance of power; but when Russia occupies Moldavia and Wallachia , albeit only temporarily, that disturbs the balance of power. France occupies Rome and stays there several years during peacetime: that is nothing; but Russia only thinks of occupying Constantinople, and
15400-566: The former Russian Empire are measured according to the Kronstadt sea-gauge. Yuri Gagarin , the first man in space, said in 1967 that it was "the Hub of the Universe". The modern city's most striking landmark is considered to be the enormous Naval Cathedral , dedicated to St Nicholas and built between 1908 and 1913 in Anchor Square which also contains many military memorials. The cathedral is regarded as
15554-521: The front. Eighty-three thousand people fought directly on the Leningrad Front. For the protection of Leningrad 10 brigades of naval infantry, four regiments, and more than 40 separate battalions and companies were formed in Kronstadt. The Luftwaffe and German artillery sent thousands of bombs and shells onto the naval dockyard and the Arsenal factory. The German air raids in September 1941, damaged ships of
15708-617: 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
15862-480: 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
16016-542: The habit of employing in the first instance. The agreement referred to by the French was in 1740. At present most historians (except for the new Russian Orthodox nationalists) accept that the question of the holy places was no more than a pretext for the Crimean War. As conflict emerged over the issue of the holy places, Nicholas I and Nesselrode began a diplomatic offensive, which they hoped would prevent either British or French interference in any conflict between Russia and
16170-460: The immediate chain of events that led to France and Britain declaring war on Russia on 27 and 28 March 1854, respectively. He pursued Catholic support by asserting France's "sovereign authority" over the Christian population of Palestine , to the detriment of Russia (the sponsor of Eastern Orthodoxy ). To achieve that, he in May 1851 appointed Charles, marquis de La Valette , a zealous leading member of
16324-556: The independence of the Ottoman Empire against Russia. They were also to promote the influence of Britain in Turkey", also: "to promote British free-trade interests (which may have sounded splendid but was arguably damaging to the Ottoman Empire)". "British exports to the Ottoman Empire, including Egypt and the Danubian principalities, increased nearly threefold from 1840 to 1851 (...) Thus it
16478-657: The integrity of the Ottoman Empire because they did not want to see Russia gaining access to the Mediterranean Sea . Austria had the same fears. Russia, as a member of the Holy Alliance , had operated as the "police of Europe" to maintain the balance of power that had been established in the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Russia had assisted Austria's efforts in suppressing the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 , and expected
16632-484: The island. It is a feat of marine engineering consisting of a combination of levee-causeway and seagate. Its construction on the shoals of the Gulf of Finland involved the removal of some of the historic fortifications. Kronstadt is twinned with: On 1 March 2022, the Polish city of Piła suspended its partnership with Kronstadt as a reaction to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine . Russian language Russian
16786-509: The late 1930s, the fortified city became the base of the Soviet Baltic Fleet. During that time it was an important training centre for the Soviet navy. The Kronstadt naval dockyard overhauled and repaired surface ships and submarines for the Baltic Fleet. All forts and batteries of the city were reconstructed. At 23:37 on June 21, 1941, fleet operational readiness Number 1 was announced by Baltic Fleet Commander Vice Admiral V. Tributs on
16940-610: The main industrial and cultural centre of the Soviet Union, was successfully prevented. The honorary status of " City of Military Glory " was conferred on it by the President of the Russian Federation Dmitriy Medvedev on April 27, 2009, citing the "courage, endurance and mass heroism, exhibited by defenders of the city in the struggle for the freedom and independence of the Motherland". With changing historical trends,
17094-516: 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
17248-556: The opportunity to occupy Algeria , which had been under Ottoman rule, in 1830. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt , the most powerful vassal of the Ottoman Empire, declared independence. Ottoman forces were defeated in a number of battles , which forced Mahmud II to seek Russian military aid. A Russian army of 10,000 landed on the shores of the Bosphorus in 1833 and helped prevent the Egyptians from capturing Constantinople . "The reasons for
17402-517: The order of the People's Commissar of the Navy Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov. Several hours later the first German aircraft began dropping mines into the canal outside Kronstadt. The duty officer, first lieutenant S. Kushnerev, ordered anti-aircraft batteries to open fire on enemy planes. Several aircraft were shot down or damaged. Twenty-seven German planes took part in the first attack, and three were destroyed by
17556-515: 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
17710-455: 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,
17864-473: The outbreak of the Crimean War (1854). Kronstadt was thoroughly refortified in the 19th century. The old three-decker forts, five in number, which formerly constituted the principal defences and had resisted the Anglo-French fleets during the Crimean War , became of secondary importance. From the plans of Eduard Totleben a new fort, Fort Constantine , and four batteries were constructed (1856–1871) to defend
18018-446: 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
18172-476: The peace of Europe is threatened. The English declare war on the Chinese , who have, it seems, offended them: no one has the right to intervene; but Russia is obliged to ask Europe for permission if it quarrels with its neighbour. England threatens Greece to support the false claims of a miserable Jew and burns its fleet: that is a lawful action; but Russia demands a treaty to protect millions of Christians, and that
18326-453: 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
18480-455: 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
18634-436: The population saw peaks and troughs partly determined by the expansion and then decline of the naval base and dockyard. Note Census data of 1897 includes military personnel Recent population data indicate it has stabilised as follows: 43,385 ( 2002 Census ) ; 43,005 ( 2010 Census ) . The city of Kronstadt is built on level ground on the island and is thus exposed to flooding, most notably in 1824. The port
18788-418: 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
18942-538: The principal approach, and seven batteries to cover the shallower northern channel. All these fortifications were low and thickly armoured earthworks with heavy Krupp guns on their ramparts. The city is surrounded by an enceinte . In summer 1891, the French fleet was officially received in Kronstadt . It was a first step towards the forthcoming Franco-Russian Alliance . During the Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) riots of
19096-475: 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
19250-466: 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 ,
19404-491: 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
19558-539: The right to inherit power in Egypt in exchange for the removal of Egyptian forces from Syria and Lebanon . Moreover, Muhammad Ali had to admit a formal dependence on the Ottoman sultan. After Muhammad Ali refused to obey the requirements of the convention, the allied Anglo-Austrian fleet blockaded the Nile Delta , bombarded Beirut and captured Acre . Muhammad Ali then accepted the convention's conditions. On 13 July 1841, after
19712-549: The sake of his domestic position; the British government needed an independent Turkey for the security of the Eastern Mediterranean... Mutual fear, not mutual aggression, caused the Crimean War. In the early 1800s, the Ottoman Empire suffered a number of existential challenges. The Serbian Revolution in 1804 resulted in the autonomy of the first Balkan Christian nation under the empire. The Greek War of Independence , which began in early 1821, provided further evidence of
19866-526: The short term, it gained the opportunity to receive the support of European powers (primarily Britain) in opposing the desire of the conquered peoples for self-determination and Russia, which sought to crush its influence in the Balkans and Asia. Publicly, European politicians made broad promises to the Ottomans. Lord Palmerston , the British Foreign Secretary , said in 1839: "All that we hear about
20020-606: The sparsely-populated " Wild Fields " toward the warm water ports of the Black Sea, which does not freeze over, unlike the handful of ports controlled by Russia in the north. The goal was to promote year-round trade and a year-round navy. Pursuit of that goal brought the emerging Russian state into conflict with the Ukrainian Cossacks and then the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate and Circassians . "The plan to develop Russia as
20174-463: The spring of 1853 he had a series of interviews with Sir George Hamilton Seymour , then British ambassador at St. Petersburg." Emperor Nicholas I assured that he did not intend to seize Constantinople and territories in the Balkans, he himself offered Britain to take over Egypt and Crete. Concessions at the conclusion of the London Straits Convention were made earlier in 1841. "By signing the convention,
20328-675: 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
20482-459: 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
20636-599: The terms of the Kucuk-Kaynardzhiy treaty of 1774, which allowed giving advice to the Sultan, but did not oblige them to accept". "By the early 1850s Stratford Canning had become far more than an ambassador or adviser to the Porte. The ‘Great Elchi’, or Great Ambassador, as he was known in Constantinople, had a direct influence on the policies of the Turkish government. (...) His presence was a source of deep resentment among
20790-443: The trade treaty of 1838 (see Treaty of Balta Liman ), Britain received unlimited access to the markets of the Ottoman Empire. "Britain imposed on the Porte a Tariff Convention which in effect transformed the Ottoman Empire into a virtual free-trade zone. Therefore its trade interests pushed it to protect the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. In the long term, the Ottoman Empire lost the opportunity to modernize and industrialize, but in
20944-407: The treasury and undermined Russia's influence in Europe. The empire would take decades to recover. Russia's humiliation forced its educated elites to identify its problems and recognise the need for fundamental reforms. They saw rapid modernisation as the sole way to recover the empire's status as a European power . The war thus became a catalyst for reforms of Russia's social institutions , including
21098-770: 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
21252-506: 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
21406-399: The war had resulted not from aggression, but from the interacting fears of the major players: In some sense the Crimean War was predestined and had deep-seated causes. Neither Nicholas I nor Napoleon III nor the British government could retreat from the conflict for prestige once it was launched. Nicholas needed a subservient Turkey for the sake of Russian security; Napoleon needed success for
21560-526: The winter, the Gulf of Finland freezes over completely. Under the command of Governor-general Alexander Danilovich Menshikov , workers used thousands of frames (caissons) made of logs from evergreen trees filled with stones which were moved by horses across the frozen sea, and placed in cuttings made in the ice. Thus, several new small islands were created, and forts were erected on them, virtually closing access to Saint-Petersburg by sea. Only two narrow navigable channels remained, with forts guarding them. One of
21714-751: The world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on the Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has
21868-477: Was de facto independent. In 1838 in a situation similar to that of 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt was not happy about his lack of control and power in Syria , and he resumed military action . The Ottomans lost to the Egyptians at the Battle of Nezib on 24 June 1839 but were saved by Britain, Austria , Prussia and Russia, who signed a convention in London on 15 July 1840 that granted Muhammad Ali and his descendants
22022-399: Was Russia's expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. The British desired to preserve Ottoman integrity and were concerned that Russia might make advances toward British India or move toward Scandinavia or Western Europe . A distraction (in the form of the Ottoman Empire) on the Russian southwest flank would mitigate that threat. The Royal Navy also wanted to forestall the threat of
22176-399: Was determined to reform it. However, no matter how great the problems of Russia were, Russia believed those of the Ottomans were greater. "In a one-to-one fight Nikolai (Tsar) had no doubt of beating the Ottoman armies and navy". Russian foreign policy failed to understand the importance of Britain's trade interests and did not understand the changes in the situation after the conclusion of
22330-405: 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
22484-421: 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
22638-480: Was given. By the time the Soviets had decided on a maritime evacuation of Tallinn, over 200 Soviet civilian and military vessels had been assembled in Tallinn harbour. After the evacuation of Tallinn , a submarine subdivision had been organized in Kronstadt. By the end of 1941, 82 naval operations had taken place. Hitler was enraged, because Soviet submarines frequently disrupted military supplies of strategic materials from Sweden to Germany. The Germans tried to block
22792-447: Was located in Kronstadt, guarding the approaches to Saint Petersburg. In March 1921, the island city was the site of the Kronstadt rebellion . The historic centre of the city and its fortifications are part of the World Heritage Site that is Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments . Kronstadt has been a place of pilgrimage for Orthodox Christians for many years due to the memory of Saint John of Kronstadt . The name of
22946-407: Was necessary because the water level of the Finnish Gulf could change considerably in a short time, creating problems for shipping. The annual flood also required close monitoring of the water level. The Kronstadt sea-gauge with the tide gauge pavilion is the zero level of the Baltic system of highs and lows. All depths and altitudes (even the heights of spacecraft) in Russia and some other countries of
23100-420: Was riddled with graft, corruption and inefficiency and was unprepared for war. Its navy was weak and technologically backward. Its army, although very large, suffered from colonels who pocketed their men's pay, from poor morale, and from a technological deficit relative to Britain and France. By the war's end, the profound weaknesses of the Russian armed forces had become readily apparent, and the Russian leadership
23254-477: Was satisfied with the weak government in Constantinople (Istanbul). As a result, the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi was signed and greatly benefited Russia. It provided for a military alliance between the Russian and the Ottoman Empires if one of them was attacked, and a secret additional clause allowed the Ottomans to opt out of sending troops but to close the Straits to foreign warships if Russia were under threat. Egypt remained nominally under Ottoman sovereignty but
23408-402: 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
23562-410: Was used for docking vessels of the Russian Navy. The Peter and Catherine Canals connected with the merchant and middle harbours across the city. Between them stood the old Italian Palace of Prince Menshikov, whose site was later occupied by a school for pilots. In the second half of the 18th century the building of the former Italian palace was used by various military training institutions. In 1771–1798
23716-500: Was very important, from the financial point of view, for Britain to prevent the Ottoman Empire from falling into other hands." "From this moment (1838) the export of British manufactured goods to Turkey rose steeply. There was an elevenfold increase by 1850". Assistance from Western European powers or Russia had twice saved the Ottoman Empire from destruction, but the Ottomans also lost their independence in foreign policy. Britain and France desired more than any other states to preserve
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