Government victory
170-639: The July Days ( Russian : Июльские дни ) were a period of unrest in Petrograd , Russia , between 16–20 July [ O.S. 3–7 July] 1917. It was characterised by spontaneous armed demonstrations by soldiers, sailors, and industrial workers engaged against the Russian Provisional Government . The demonstrations were angrier and more violent than those during the February Revolution months earlier. The Provisional Government blamed
340-649: 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
510-510: 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
680-584: A crisis with several recent resignations, including that of Prime Minister Lvov. On 8 July, Alexander Kerensky , the former Minister of War of the Provisional Government, became prime minister. In general, the violent nature of the July demonstrations and the ambiguous involvement of the Bolsheviks turned public opinion against them. As the new head of the Provisional Government, Kerensky desired to re-establish
850-527: A division from a nearby naval base. The protestors also grew more violent, breaking and shooting into apartments and attacking wealthy passersby. The crowds outside of the Tauride Palace demanded to see a government official, and the Soviet Leaders sent out Viktor Chernov . When he tried to calm the crowd, they instead seized him, with one protestor famously shouting, "Take power, you son of a bitch, when it
1020-464: 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) Eastern front (World War I) October 1917 October 1917 The Eastern Front or Eastern Theater of World War I was a theater of operations that encompassed at its greatest extent the entire frontier between Russia and Romania on one side and Austria-Hungary , Bulgaria ,
1190-520: A general advance and a corresponding strategic retreat by the Russian Army. The cause of the reverses suffered by the Russian Army, despite a significant numerical superiority over the German enemy, was not so many errors in the tactical sphere, as the deficiency in technical equipment, particularly in artillery and ammunition as well as the corruption and incompetence of the Russian officers. Only by 1916 did
1360-481: A general superiority in forces, almost every Central Powers's operation in 1915 was "unexpected" for the command from the front to the regimental level. Passion for undercover intelligence in the highest Russian headquarters did not justify itself, and tactical intelligence was still based on barely reliable testimony of prisoners, in the absence of which the command up to the army, inclusive, was simply "blind". The separation of artillery from infantry with subordination to
1530-479: 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
1700-407: A later reshuffling of the government makeup. The liberal Kadet party, in the face of the failures of the government, criticised its ineffective policies and failures to take action. On 2 July, four Kadet ministers walked out of the coalition government in protest, leaving the Provisional Government composed primarily of moderate left socialists. Furthermore, Prime Minister Georgy Lvov announced to
1870-572: 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
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#17328450922752040-586: A million men, the Romanian Army suffered from poor training and a lack of appropriate equipment. The initial success of the Romanian Army in Austria-Hungarian territory was quickly undermined by the Central Powers. German and Austro-Hungarian troops advanced from the north, while Bulgarian-Turkish-German forces marched into Romania from the south. Although thought to be a tactical blunder by contemporaries,
2210-607: 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
2380-572: A more conservative path. Russian language Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family . It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians . It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union . Russian has remained an official language of
2550-480: A partial mobilization of the Russian Army in the military districts that bordered Austria. The following day he was convinced by his advisors to order a full mobilization to follow the military's existing mobilization schedule. Nicholas hoped Germany would see this as a regional conflict between Russia and Austria, but because their war plans depended on taking advantage of Russia's slower mobilization speed, and due to
2720-516: 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
2890-451: A question of time. But should Germany succeed I hesitate to think what the effect will be on the fortunes of the campaign. … and yet no one seems to have thought it his particular duty to prepare a plan... Up until 1916, the Romanians followed the tides of war with interest, while attempting to situate themselves in the most advantageous position. French and Russian diplomats had begun courting
3060-653: A series of Russian offensives which would force the Germans to deploy additional forces to counter them. The first such operation was the Lake Naroch Offensive in March–April 1916, the Germans repulsed the attacks, but the offensive achieved its main goal - the Germans stopped the attack on Verdun, giving the French a break. The Italian operations during 1916 had one extraordinary result: Austrian divisions were pulled away from
3230-565: A steady advance. The Russian Eighth Army overwhelmed the Austrian Fourth and pushed on to Lutsk, advancing 40 miles (64 km) beyond the starting position. Over a million Austrians were lost, with over 500,000 men killed or taken prisoner by mid-June. Although the Brusilov offensive was initially successful, it slowed down considerably. An inadequate number of troops and poorly maintained supply lines hindered Brusilov's ability to follow up on
3400-551: A wide front, and to position their trenches a mere 75 yards (69 m) away from Austrian trenches. Brusilov's plan worked impeccably. The Russians outnumbered the Austrians 200,000 to 150,000, and held a considerable advantage in guns, with 904 large guns to 600. Most importantly innovative new tactics similar to those independently invented by Erwin Rommel were used to perform quick and effective close-range surprise attacks that allowed
3570-527: 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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#17328450922753740-475: 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
3910-401: 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
4080-593: 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
4250-485: 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
4420-613: 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
4590-504: Is handed to you!" The crowd continued to hold Chernov hostage until Trotsky made his way through the crowd, urging the crowd to release the man, which they did. The protesters, most of them Bolshevik supporters, attempted to gain support from the Bolshevik party. But when they gathered near the Bolshevik headquarters, Lenin initially refused to see them. In the end, he simply gave them a brief speech, yet refused to give them his support, with
4760-563: 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
4930-564: 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
5100-402: 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
5270-569: 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
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5440-576: 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
5610-518: 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
5780-461: 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
5950-966: 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
6120-623: The Battle of Stallupönen , which was the opening battle of the Eastern Front, quickly turned to a disastrous defeat following the Battle of Tannenberg in August 1914; even though the Russians were successfully defending at Gumbinnen a while before Tannenberg. After the Russian disaster, German troops under the command of Hindenburg inflicted another crushing defeat on the numerically superior Russian army in
6290-732: The Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers in March 1918 after Operation Faustschlag , taking Russia out of the war; leading to a Central Powers victory. However, the Western Entente soon defeated the Central Powers, with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk being annulled by the Armistice of 11 November 1918 . Romania and the Central Powers signed a separate peace treaty on 7 May 1918, but it
6460-413: 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
6630-579: The Eastern front . The offensive began 18 June 1917 and continued to 6 July 1917, coinciding with the July Days. The Russian soldiers initially saw victory over the Austro-Hungarian forces , whom they managed to take by surprise, but German troops soon began a counteroffensive that devastated the Russian army. The offensive was met at home with extreme disfavor and discontent, creating an opposite effect of what
6800-625: The First Battle of the Masurian Lakes . A second Russian incursion into Galicia was more successful, with the Russians controlling almost all of that region by the end of 1914, routing four Austrian armies in the process. Under the command of Nikolai Ivanov , Nikolai Ruzsky and Aleksei Brusilov , the Russians won the Battle of Galicia in September and began the Siege of Przemyśl , the next fortress on
6970-555: The Internet . Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script ; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language, which is usually shown in writing not by a change of
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7140-585: The Julian Calendar , which was used in Russia until 14 February [ O.S. 1 February] 1918. In April 1917, Lenin gave his April Theses , declaring that the proletariat should overthrow the bourgeoisie, oust the Provisional Government , and take power. Though initially received with outrage, Lenin's idea of an armed, proletarian insurrection became increasingly popular. By July, rank-and-file Bolsheviks in particular spoke of overthrowing
7310-525: The October Revolution of November [ O.S. October] 1917. Despite the political instability, the majority of the Russian Army was still intact and stayed at the front line until early 1918, though the Bolsheviks began taking steps to dissolve it in December 1917 while maintaining some forces against the Central Powers as their negotiations were ongoing. The new Soviet government established by
7480-722: The Ottoman Empire , and Germany on the other. It ranged from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, involved most of Eastern Europe , and stretched deep into Central Europe . The term contrasts with the Western Front , which was being fought in Belgium and France . Unlike the static warfare on the Western Front, the fighting on the geographically larger Eastern Front
7650-400: The Provisional Government , whom they considered bourgeois . Shortly after Lenin's address, on April 18, 1917, it was revealed by a diplomatic note sent by Pavel Milyukov that the Provisional Government supported continuing with the war, even though they publicly claimed otherwise. As a result, there were mass popular demonstrations of discontent. In the aftermath of these demonstrations,
7820-491: The Provisional government trying to lessen the trust of his followers by charges of German spying. Though there was controversy of Bolshevik's intentions during July Days, the seemingly inadequate leadership did not assume power, whether they desired it or not. Some Bolsheviks saw the July Days demonstrations as dangerous and feared that the actions would provoke retaliation from opposing political party members trying to counter
7990-664: The Russian Federation , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , and Tajikistan , and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine , Moldova , the Caucasus , Central Asia , and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel . Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe , the most spoken Slavic language , as well as
8160-637: The Russian Provisional Government chose to continue the war to fulfill its obligations to the Entente. In July 1917 Russia's last offensive of the war ended in failure, and in September Germany captured Riga , bringing the German Army closer to the Russian capital. This was followed by a military coup attempt that weakened the Provisional Government. The Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian Republic in
8330-476: 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
8500-507: 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
8670-451: The offensive , came close to Krakow and occupied Chernivtsi, but a counterattack by the Central Powers saved the situation. The year ended with a bloody battle on the rivers Bzura, Ravka, Nida and Pilica, where the Central Powers planned to take Warsaw, but could not and were forced to withdraw from the battle. In 1915 the Chief of German Great General Staff , General of Infantry Erich von Falkenhayn decided to make its main effort on
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#17328450922758840-424: The "spark" that ignited the First World War is attributed to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip, which took place on 28 June 1914. Approximately a month later, on 28 July 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. This act led to a series of events that would quickly expand into the First World War; thus, the Habsburg government in Vienna initiated the pivotal decision that would begin
9010-405: 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
9180-409: The Austro-Hungarian offensive power against Serbia. Conversely, the Imperial German Navy believed it could be victorious over Britain with Russian neutrality, something which Moltke knew would not be possible. Austria-Hungary's participation in the outbreak of World War I has been neglected by historians, as emphasis has traditionally been placed on Germany's role as the prime instigator. However,
9350-441: The Balkans inflamed Slavic nationalism and angered Serbia. Bosnia-Herzegovina became a "rallying cry" for South Slavs, with hostilities between Austria-Hungary and Serbia steadily increasing. The situation was ripe for conflict, and when the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Austrian imperial heir, Franz Ferdinand, these longstanding hostilities culminated into an all-out war. The Allied Powers wholeheartedly supported
9520-412: 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
9690-418: The Bolshevik Military Organization, and the Petersburg Committee; the Central Committee seemed to eventually display mixed feelings about the demonstrations at the height of the movement. The decision to call off demonstrations in the streets of Petrograd was made when a 2 or 3 a.m. meeting took place involving Lenin and the Bolshevik Central Committee on July 5 with Pravda publishing the news the same day. From
9860-399: The Bolshevik party pulling their support soon after. Without any leadership to support them, the protesters soon dispersed. At midnight on July 3, the Soviet leaders called a closed meeting, and the consensus was that they would not be forced to take power. They also proceeded to blame the Bolsheviks for the demonstrations, though it is unclear whether the Bolshevik party actually orchestrated
10030-463: The Bolsheviks for the violence brought about by the July Days and in a subsequent crackdown on the Bolshevik Party , the party was dispersed, many of the leadership arrested. Vladimir Lenin fled to Finland , while Leon Trotsky was among those arrested. The outcome of the July Days represented a temporary decline in the growth of Bolshevik power and influence in the period before the October Revolution . Note: Dates given in this article reference
10200-465: The Bolsheviks gained much support from soldiers, who were increasingly frustrated with the Provisional Government. Following the events of April, the Bolshevik Party gained support primarily among soldiers and workers, as the Bolsheviks were vocally critical of the Provisional Government. Peasants were more likely to support the Socialist-Revolutionaries , who focused more on the question of land reform and distribution. The Kronstadt naval base which
10370-402: The Carpathians , and following successful offensives by the Central Powers in 1915 its gains were reversed. Germany and Austria-Hungary defeated Russian forces in Galicia and Poland , causing Russia to abandon the Polish salient , parts of Belarus and the Baltic region , and Galicia . However, the campaigns of 1914–1915 also failed to achieve Germany's objective of taking Russia out of
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#173284509227510540-417: The East. A series of failures in 1915 gave the Russians time to reconfigure industry for wartime, and they did it successfully, Russian industry began to overtake Austrian in terms of growth rates and eventually increased the productivity of ammunition several times. Here is what information was announced at the Duma meeting: The production of rifles doubled, the production of machine guns increased 6 times,
10710-467: The Eastern Front, and accordingly transferred considerable forces there. The year began with a successful German offensive in the area of the Masurian lakes . At the same time, a large battle for the city of Przasnysz took place on the Polish front. The city changed hands several times but eventually remained in Russian hands. As a result of the battle, the Germans lost from 38,000 to 60,000 soldiers and Russian losses amounted to about 40,000 men. In March,
10880-441: The Empire, while three million lived outside it. With the growing emergence of nationalism in the twentieth century, unity of all South Slavs looked promising. This tension is exemplified by Conrad von Hötzendorf 's letter to Franz Ferdinand: The unification of the South Slav race is one of the powerful national movements which can neither be ignored nor kept down. The question can only be, whether unification will take place within
11050-451: The German General Staff, led by Alfred von Schlieffen from 1891 to 1906, developed a plan that called for German armies to pass through Belgium and then turn south to quickly capture Paris, while a smaller German force would pin down the French defenders along the Franco-German border. With France being defeated before Russia could fully mobilize, Germany could then turn its focus on Russia, which Schlieffen believed would not be taken out of
11220-416: The Germans could no longer use the lack of artillery supplies from the Russians and the first setbacks began, the breakthrough to Minsk and the offensive on Dvinsk completely failed with heavy losses for the Germans, the offensive in central Belarus also turned out to be unsuccessful, the Russians began to behave more actively on the southern front, where Austria-Hungary suffered a heavy defeat near Lutsk,
11390-431: The Germans only huge losses, and the strengthening of the Russians in the region. Germans' initial plans to destroy the Russians in Poland ended in desperate attempts to prevent their invasion of Silesia At the same time, Austria-Hungary was trying to regain the territories lost in the summer, they attacked the Russians on the San River , and after a long period of fighting they were forced to retreat. The Russians went on
11560-440: The Germans tried to take Poland again, the third Battle of Warsaw began, and like the previous two, ended with the defeat of Germany. In May 1915, to eliminate the Russian threat the Central Powers began the successful Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive in Galicia. After the Second Battle of the Masurian Lakes , the German and Austro-Hungarian troops on the Eastern Front functioned under a unified command. The offensive soon turned into
11730-409: 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,
11900-468: 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
12070-411: 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
12240-734: The Polish central authority within the Empire, responsible for the formation of the Polish Legions , an auxiliary military formation within the Austro-Hungarian army. At the end of 1914, the main focus of the fighting shifted to central part of Russian Poland , west of the river Vistula . The October Battle of the Vistula River , Augustow operation , and the November Battle of Łódź they brought
12410-462: The Provisional Government, at that time composed primarily of liberals, was reshuffled to include Socialist-Revolutionaries , creating a coalition government. Refusing to take part in the coalition, the Bolsheviks were the only socialist faction to emerge from these events, known as the April Crisis , without negative association with the continuation of the Russian involvement in the war. As a result,
12580-590: The Romanians early on, but persuasion tactics gradually intensified. For King Ferdinand to commit his force of half a million men, he expected the Allies to offer a substantial incentive. Playing on Romanian anti-Hungarian sentiment the Allies promised the Austria-Hungarian territory of Ardeal (Transylvania) to Romania. Transylvanian demographics strongly favoured the Romanians. Romania succumbed to Allied enticement on 18 August 1916. Nine days later, on 27 August, Romanian troops marched into Transylvania. Romania's entry into
12750-562: The Romanians opted to mount operations in both directions. By the middle of November the German force passed through the Carpathians, suffering significant casualties due to determined Romanian resistance. By 5 December, Bulgarian troops had crossed the Danube and were approaching the capital, Bucharest . At the same time as the Austro-Hungarian troops moved east, and as the Bulgarians marched north,
12920-807: 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
13090-458: 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
13260-450: The Russian southern front. This allowed the Russian forces to organize a counter-offensive. The Brusilov offensive was a large tactical assault carried out by Russian forces against Austro-Hungarian forces in Galicia. General Aleksei Brusilov believed victory against the Central Powers was possible if close attention was paid to preparation. Brusilov suggested that the Russians should attack on
13430-465: The Russians to attack in an attempt to distract the Turks, and Yudenich agreed. The resulting offensive began on 10 January 1916. This offensive was unanticipated by the Turks, as it was in the middle of winter. The Turkish situation was exacerbated by the absences of Third Army's commander Kamil Pasha and Chief of Staff Major Guse. Coupled with an imbalance of forces – the Russians had 325,000 troops while
13600-649: The Slavs' nationalistic fight. George Macaulay Trevelyan , a British historian, saw Serbia's war against Austria-Hungary as a "war of liberation" that would "free South Slavs from tyranny." In his own words: "If ever there was a battle for freedom, there is such a battle now going on in Southeastern Europe against Austrian and Magyar. If this war ends in the overthrow of the Magyar tyranny, an immense step forward will have been taken toward racial liberty and European peace." In
13770-519: The Somme , while the Brusilov offensive continued in the East. It is certain that so relatively small a state as Rumania had never before been given a role so important, and, indeed, so decisive for the history of the world at so favorable a moment. Never before had two Great Powers like Germany and Austria found themselves so much at the mercy of the military resources of a country which had scarcely one twentieth of
13940-454: 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
14110-399: The Turks only 78,000 – the situation appeared grim for the Central Powers. After three months of fighting, the Russians captured the city of Trabzon on 18 April 1916. Allied operations in 1916 were dictated by an urgent need to force Germany to transfer forces from its Western to Eastern fronts, to relieve the pressure on the French at the Battle of Verdun . This was to be accomplished by
14280-460: 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
14450-569: The War Ministry. The Minister of War was responsible for organizing the production of weapons and ammunition, the implementation of the replenishment of troop personnel, military transportation outside the provinces declared a theater of military operations. The military districts in the theater of operations were subordinate to the commanders-in-chief of the armies of the fronts, but not to the Headquarters. Military production also lagged behind: until
14620-420: The Western Front, at the cost of its own heavy losses. In August 1916 Romania entered the war but was quickly overrun by Germany, though Russia helped prevent a total Romanian collapse. The events of the February Revolution in March [ O.S. February] 1917, caused by food shortages in Russian cities, began a decline in discipline among the troops. After the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II ,
14790-711: The acts. That made the Central Committee try to prevent that by restraining support for the demonstrations. Opposing the declarations of the Central Committee, when they spoke and acted in support of the demonstrations, were the Bolshevik Military Organization and the Petersburg Committee. The Bolshevik newspaper Pravda did not seem to side with the Central Committee but instead published feelings of unrest. These feelings were matched by Lenin,
14960-402: The beginning of the war, there was more light artillery than France, and no less than Germany. The first events were the capture of Kalish and Chenhostov by the Germans without fighting, and the first real clash was clashes at Wierzbołów . The first full-scale operation was invasion of East Prussia on 17 August 1914 and the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia . The Russian offensive in
15130-461: The borders of the Central Powers, removing the threat of Russian invasion of Germany, although there was still slight Russian penetration into Austria-Hungary. At the end of 1915 the German-Austrian advance was stopped on the line Riga – Jakobstadt – Dünaburg – Baranovichi – Pinsk – Dubno – Tarnopol . The general outline of this front line did not change until the Russian collapse in 1917. During
15300-539: The boundaries of the Monarchy – that is at the expense of Serbia's independence – or under Serbia's leadership at the expense of the Monarchy. The cost to the Monarchy would be the loss of its South Slav provinces and thus of almost its entire coastline. The loss of territory and prestige would relegate the Monarchy to the status of a small power. The annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 by Austrian foreign minister Baron von Aehrenthal in an effort to assert domination over
15470-403: 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
15640-460: The buildup of Russian war industries increase the production of war material and improve the supply situation. By mid-1915, the Russians had been expelled from Russian Poland , The whole campaign cost the Russians about 400,000 men, however, the Germans and Austrians suffered setbacks, their attempt to break through to Lublin was repulsed with losses of 37,500 people, the Russians lost 9,524 people, and hence pushed hundreds of kilometers away from
15810-506: The campaign of 1915, the Russian Empire lost the entire line of western fortresses, and more than 4,000 guns. The causes of heavy defeats and losses of personnel, weapons, and as a result - vast territories (the entire Kingdom of Poland, part of the Baltic states, Grodno , partly Volhynia and Podolia provinces - up to 300,000 square kilometers) were to a large extent systemic shortcomings in
15980-518: The central government as a strong authority, so in response to the July Days, he began enacting measures to discipline civil disorder. This included the order to arrest Bolshevik leaders for their (assumed) responsibility of the violent July Days. Lenin successfully went into hiding, staying first in the apartment of Benyamin Kayurov , before fleeing to Finland . Many other Bolshevik leaders were arrested, including Trotsky, Kamenev, and Lunacharsky . During
16150-683: The conflict. The causes of the Great War have generally been defined in diplomatic terms, but certain deep-seated issues in Austria-Hungary undoubtedly contributed to the beginnings of the First World War. The Austro-Hungarian situation in the Balkans pre-1914 is a primary factor in its involvement in the war. The movement towards South Slav unity was a major problem for the Habsburg Empire, which
16320-417: The consonant but rather by changing the following vowel. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically , though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к [ zamók , 'lock'] and за́мок [ zámok , 'castle']), or to indicate
16490-432: The construction of fortifications in the rear of the troops. Most often, such work was hastily carried out by militia squads and the mobilized local population, sometimes including women, and then brought to the necessary defensive state by the combat units retreating on them, already exhausted by battles and night marches. Russian strategic expanses allowed the army to take a break from failures and start active resistance,
16660-562: 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
16830-422: The difficulty of tactical responsibility, to slaughter often without purpose. We sent them, being ourselves far away, not seeing either our own or the enemy, and therefore not conforming to reality. Instead of punishment, we reward such leaders, because as far as the leaders were far away, the same, but still more, the higher leaders kept even more distant. People ceased to be people, but turned into pawns. We went to
17000-406: The end of autumn, the active army suffered from a shortage of rifles and ammunition, the consumption of which turned out to be incommensurable with the volume of production. Contemporaries also noted the isolation of the Russian commanding staff from the soldiers, the lack of practical warfare skills among the top-level commanders. "We did have courage to send people to mass slaughter, hiding behind
17170-441: The entire event, or if it was simply a spontaneous demonstration that happened to include Bolshevik supporters. In either case, the Bolshevik party refused to openly support the demonstrations. The military authorities sent troops against the demonstrators, leading to many arrests and possibly several hundred deaths due to the violence in the streets. The Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks supported punitive measures against
17340-413: 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,
17510-490: The fight in a state of some kind of oblivion and stunnedness", wrote the representative of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Infantry General Fyodor Palitzin , in his diary. Failures in the Russian system of command and control of troops and the organization of hostilities occurred at other levels. Thus, serious shortcomings in reconnaissance led to the absence of any analysis of the enemy's plans and actions. With
17680-451: 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
17850-533: The first time in decades that Russian war planning was primarily offensive. Prior to the outbreak of war, German strategy was based on the Schlieffen Plan . With the Franco-Russian Agreement in place from the early 1890s, Germany knew that war with either of these combatants would result in war with the other, which meant that there would be a two-front war in both the west and the east. Therefore,
18020-461: The front. The leaders of the Bolshevik during the July Days included Vladimir Lenin , in large part, along with Leon Trotsky , Grigory Zinoviev , and Lev Kamenev . The leadership responsibility in the events of July Days is still debated, and the Bolsheviks and Soviets both had periods of uncertainty in their involvement. The protesters, made up largely of soldiers, sailors, and factory workers, on
18190-672: 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
18360-560: The government authorized the closure of any publication that advocated military disorder. On 12 July, Kerensky reinstated the death penalty for rebelling, deserting, and disorderly soldiers on the Eastern Front, a move that conservatives approved of, even though Kerensky himself had long been affiliated with the Socialist Revolutionaries. A public funeral was held by the government on 15 July for Cossack soldiers who were killed by July Day participants. On 18 July, Kerensky moved
18530-480: 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
18700-424: The government intended. Rather than creating support for the Provisional Government, disorder on the front continued and dissatisfaction with the government and its disastrous policies grew. Because of the coalition situation created by the events of April, the only political faction that opposed the offensive was the Bolsheviks. Leading up to the July Days, the Provisional Government faced a crisis that resulted in
18870-495: The government that he planned to resign on 7 July as well. The morning of July 3, 1917, the First Machine Gun Regiment planned out demonstrations to carry out later that day. With the help of Bolshevik activists, they elected a committee to help delegate resources and to gather support. On the evening of July 3 demonstrations broke out in Petrograd . Led by the First Machine Gun Regiment, armed soldiers marched through
19040-677: The immediate years preceding the First World War , the Kingdom of Romania was involved in the Second Balkan War on the side of Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and the Ottoman Empire against Bulgaria. The Treaty of Bucharest , signed on 10 August 1913, ended the Balkan conflict and added 6,960 square kilometers to Romania's territory. Although militarized, Romania decided upon a policy of neutrality at
19210-501: The initial victories in June. The Brusilov offensive is considered to be the greatest Russian victory of the First World War. Although it cost the Russians half a million casualties during the first two months alone, the offensive successfully diverted substantial forces of the Central Powers from the Western front, and persuaded Romania to join the war, diverting even more Central Powers forces to
19380-411: The inspectors of the corps and ammunition supply units (park brigades and divisions) created difficulties in the operational replenishment of ammunition and shells in the combat units. At the same time, huge stockpiles of ammunition were created in the fortresses, which were then delivered to the enemy during the retreat or destroyed due to the impossibility of evacuation. Special units were not created for
19550-532: The insurgents. They began to disarm workers, disband revolutionary military units, and carry out arrests. On July 5–6 the offices and printing plant of Pravda and the headquarters of the Bolshevik Central Committee were destroyed. On July 7 the Provisional Government issued an order for the arrest of Lenin, who was forced to go underground. On July 8 troops loyal to the regime arrived in Petrograd from
19720-501: The management of the armed forces and the defense industry. The multi-stage placement of military orders, their slow passage in the depths of the War Ministry, the disunity of the front and rear played a negative role. Thus, until the autumn of 1915, the Russian Supreme Commander-in-Chief only coordinated the actions of the commanders-in-chief of the armies of the fronts, distributed reinforcements, requesting them from
19890-700: The massive Allied armada that landed in Galipoli . Meanwhile, Russia was preoccupied with other armies on the Eastern Front. However, the appointment of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich as Viceroy and Commander in the Caucasus in September 1915 revived the situation of the Russo-Turkish front. When the Allies withdrew from Gallipoli in December, the Caucasus Army's Chief of Staff General Nikolai Yudenich believed Turkish forces would take action against his army. This concern
20060-641: The military reforms in the 1860s following the Crimean War and was also influenced by the limited capability of Russia's railway network to facilitate the quick mobilization of troops, though that was gradually improving. Russian strategy remained this way until developments that took place starting in 1911. That was the year that the French Army chief of staff visited Russia and asked the Russian high command to plan for an immediate offensive if war with Germany broke out to help prevent them from capturing Paris. This
20230-463: The more adept Erich Ludendorff , was given effective control of the army and ordered to advance on Romania. On 3 September, the first troops of the Central Powers marched into Romanian territory. Simultaneously, the Bulgarian Air Force commenced an incessant bombing of Bucharest . In an attempt to relieve some pressure, French and British forces launched a new offensive known as the Battle of
20400-478: The most geographically widespread language of Eurasia . It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers , and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers . Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , one of the six official languages of the United Nations , as well as the fourth most widely used language on
20570-439: The most notable among them being Quartermaster-General Yuri Danilov 's argument for going on the offensive against both Germany and Austria-Hungary. In early 1912, the Russian high command decided on a variant of the plan known as Schedule 19A, in which two Russian armies would invade East Prussia while four armies would invade Galicia . This did not give Russia the decisive advantage in either location, but it tried to balance
20740-433: The need for Russia to support France by attacking Germany while also acknowledging that the main interest of Russian foreign policy was in the Balkans . The plan also meant that Russia would begin its offensive before its army was fully mobilized, but it was believed that this was a necessary risk, because there would be a limited amount of time to attack Germany in support of France. The adoption of Schedule 19A in 1912 marked
20910-586: The new government ministers into the Winter Palace , and moved the Soviet from the Tauride Palace to the Smolny Institute . Bolshevik power was dispersed for the time being. The suppression of the demonstrations and the restructuring of the government marked the end of dual power. The new Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik government under Kerensky's leadership shifted in response to the July Days toward
21080-516: 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
21250-515: 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
21420-455: 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,
21590-446: 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
21760-453: 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
21930-434: The perspective of Trotsky, Bolshevik and Provisional leadership tensions heightened when an incident with Bolshevik leaders, Lunacharsky and Trotsky, showed apparent support of a final group of demonstrators being sent to the front during a House of People farewell meeting. Trotsky portrayed a back and forth of each party, Bolshevik and Provisional, trying to bring the other party into a negative light. The Provisional government
22100-455: 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
22270-406: The population of the two great states. Judging by the military situation, it was to be expected that Rumania had only to advance where she wished to decide the world war in favor of those Powers which had been hurling themselves at us in vain for years. Thus everything seemed to depend on whether Rumania was ready to make any sort of use of her momentary advantage. The entrance of Romania into the war
22440-418: 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
22610-426: The position of both countries, they felt pressure to go to war immediately. Austria-Hungary began full mobilization on 31 July, and Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August 1914. Russia's plan at the outbreak of war was known as Schedule 19. Approved by Emperor Nicholas II in July 1910 and amended over the next two years, the plan concentrated Russia's armies on its western border with Germany and Austria-Hungary and
22780-522: The problems Russia faced was sabotage from "counterrevolutionaries", a label whose definition changed depending on the accuser. The Bolsheviks took the socialist anti-capitalist sentiments and extended the suspicion to the British and French allies as one way to explain why the "bourgeois" government was continuing Russian involvement in the unpopular war. Growing unhappiness with the Provisional Government's inaction regarding land reform, industrial reform, ceasing
22950-408: The production of light guns increased 9 times, the production of artillery shells increased 40 times, the production of heavy artillery increased 4 times, and finally, the production of aircraft increased 4 times. It is no exaggeration to say that Roumania may be the turning-point of the campaign. If the Germans fail there it will be the greatest disaster inflicted upon them. Afterwards it will only be
23120-475: 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
23290-466: 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 ,
23460-491: 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
23630-540: The road towards Kraków . This early Russian success in 1914 on the Austro-Russian border was a reason for concern to the Central Powers and caused considerable German forces to be transferred to the East to take pressure off the Austrians, leading to the creation of the new German Ninth Army . The Austro-Hungarian government accepted the Polish proposal of establishing the Supreme National Committee as
23800-487: The situation was saved by German reserves. The Russians also began to go on the offensive to ease the pressure on Serbia, although unsuccessfully, but there was a turning point in the war in favor of Russia, failing to finish the campaign in 1915, the Germans were deprived of the opportunity to win the war. After the Battle of Sarikamish , the Russo-Turkish front quickly turned in favor of Russian forces. The Turks were concerned with reorganizing their army and also fighting
23970-569: The start of the First World War, mainly due to having territorial interests in both Austria-Hungary ( Transylvania and Bukovina ) and in Russia ( Bessarabia ). Strong cultural influences also affected Romanian leanings, however. King Carol I , as a Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen , favoured his Germanic roots, while the Romanian people, influenced by their Orthodox church and Latin-based language, were inclined to join France. Perhaps King Carol's attempts at joining
24140-475: The streets during July Days, were many in number but weak in leadership from the Bolsheviks and the Soviets. "All Power to the Soviets" and other slogans were put forth by the Bolsheviks, but July Days was not a gathering of power to Lenin. Despite his political skill and cry for "Land, Bread, Peace," Bolshevik support was not strong enough for him to be a powerful leader immediately following July Days, especially with
24310-438: The streets, with workers and other divisions of soldiers quickly joining as they marched to the Tauride Palace . These demonstrators marched under the slogan "All Power to the Soviets", wanting the group to not only seize but use their power. Throughout the day, soldiers fired their rifles into the air and commandeered vehicles. The following day, July 4, the protests continued, with more soldiers and workers joining in, including
24480-514: The summer of 1917, Trotsky became a major proponent of Bolshevik ideals after these uprisings, even writing for the Bolshevik Press. The Bolshevik leaders remained in prison until Kerensky released them in response to the Kornilov Affair . For the sake of restoring civil order, the government also restricted civil order more broadly. Street processions in Petrograd were momentarily banned and
24650-626: The survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language. In
24820-459: 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
24990-770: 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
25160-506: 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
25330-484: The visit of the Tsar to Constanța on 14 June 1914, signaled in a new era of positive relations between the two countries. Nevertheless, King Ferdinand I of Romania maintained a policy of neutrality, intending to gain the most for Romania by negotiating between competing powers. The result of the negotiations with the Entente was the Treaty of Bucharest (1916) , which stipulated the conditions under which Romania agreed to join
25500-621: The war as quickly because of its much larger territory. The Schlieffen Plan was actually a change from his predecessor in the 1880s, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder , who believed that Germany should first be on the defensive in the west and should coordinate with Austria to defeat Russia. Schlieffen's successor at the General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger , maintained the basic plan that Schlieffen put forward in 1905 of quickly knocking out France in
25670-439: The war on the side of the Central powers would have been fruitful had he not died in 1914, but Romanian disenchantment with Austria-Hungary had already influenced public and political opinion. French endorsement of Romanian action against Bulgaria, and support of the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest was particularly effective at inclining Romania towards the Entente. Furthermore, Russian courting of Romanian sympathies, exemplified by
25840-484: The war on the side of the Entente, particularly territorial promises in Austria-Hungary : Transylvania, Crișana and Maramureș , the whole Banat and most of Bukovina. According to historian John Keegan, these enticements offered by the Allies were never concrete, for in secret, Russia and France agreed not to honor any conventions when the end of the war came. In the years prior to 1914, Austro-Russian co-operation
26010-546: The war provoked major strategic changes for the Germans. In September 1916, German troops were mobilized to the Eastern Front. Additionally, the German Chief of the General Staff, General Erich Von Falkenhayn was forced to resign from office though his successor appointed him to command the combined Central Powers forces against Romania, along with General August von Mackensen . Kaiser Wilhelm II immediately replaced Falkenhayn with Paul von Hindenburg . Von Hindenburg's deputy,
26180-544: The war, and by 1916 Germany prioritized its resources for winning in the West. Russia went on the offensive to take pressure off of France at Verdun : Russia's attack near Lake Naroch in early 1916 was quickly defeated by Germany, but in the summer of 1916 the Brusilov offensive became the largest Entente victory in the war. Russia inflicted over one million casualties on Austria-Hungary and forced Germany to redeploy divisions from
26350-458: The war, and food shortages led to a growing demand for an all-socialist government. Demands using the popular slogan from April, "All Power to the Soviets", increased, supported by the Bolshevik Party and Lenin's April Theses. In late June 1917, in an effort to bolster support for the war effort through triumph in battle, then-War Minister Aleksandr Kerensky authorized a military offensive on
26520-474: The west before turning to focus on Russia, thereby avoiding a two-front war. This strategy was fully adopted by the German government in 1913. But the plan did not take into account that the growing military capabilities of Russia in the years since the Russo-Japanese War meant that the Russian mobilization would proceed faster than Schlieffen had originally thought. Another problem with the German strategy
26690-428: Was more dynamic , often involving the flanking and encirclement of entire formations, and resulted in over 100,000 square miles of territory becoming occupied by a foreign power. At the start of the war Russia launched offensives against both Germany and Austria-Hungary that were meant to achieve a rapid victory. The invasion of East Prussia was completely defeated while the advance into Austria-Hungary stalled in
26860-452: Was active in trying to shut down the Bolshevik actions and lessen their power, not only making arrests of their leaders but also stopping their publicity avenue by disallowing the Pravda to run. The Provisional government took advantage of popular condemnation of the Bolshevik involvement in the violence of July Days to take action in weakening the Bolshevik Party. The Provisional Government faced
27030-570: Was also in accordance with Russia's 1892 promise to attack Germany if France was invaded in order to open a second front. In 1912 the Russian chief of staff, Yakov Zhilinsky , told the French that Russia would go on the offensive against Germany fifteen days after the start of its mobilization. By this point, the improvements in Russia's infrastructure made this a lot more feasible, and there was also domestic pressure for Russia to not abandon its borderlands to foreign occupation. In 1911 new proposals for modifying Schedule 19 were made by army officers, with
27200-466: Was both crucial for European peace and difficult to maintain. Old suspicions exacerbated by the Bosnian crisis stood in the way of agreement between the two empires, as did ethnic sensitivities. The Russian military was the largest in the world consisting of 1,400,000 men. They could also mobilize up to 5 million men, but only had 4.6 million rifles to give them. Russian troops were satisfactorily supplied at
27370-550: Was canceled by Romania on 10 November 1918. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand eventually led to Austria-Hungary 's ultimatum to Serbia on 23 July 1914 with German backing, and after the Serbian response to it was rejected, Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia on 28 July. Russia had made a decision to support Serbia and defend its interests in the Balkans before that, and on 29 July Russian emperor Nicholas II ordered
27540-422: Was disconcerting for von Hindenburg. On 15 September, Paul von Hindenburg issued the following order, stating that: "The main task of the Armies is now to hold fast all positions on the Western, Eastern, Italian and Macedonian Fronts, and to employ all other available forces against Rumania." Fortunately for the Central Powers, the quantity and quality of the Romanian Army was overestimated. Although numbering half
27710-520: Was facing increasing nationalist pressure from its multinational populace. As Europe's third largest state, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was hardly homogeneous; comprising over fifty million people and eleven nationalities, the Empire was a conglomeration of a number of diverse cultures, languages, and peoples. Specifically, the South Slavic people of Austria-Hungary desired to amalgamate with Serbia in an effort to officially solidify their shared cultural heritage. Over seven million South Slavs lived inside
27880-405: 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
28050-421: 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
28220-473: Was initially defensive. The original Schedule 19 would have had the Russian Army mobilize its troops to locations that were a significant distance away from its western border and leave the entire Polish salient to be defended by local fortresses and the Warsaw garrison. Under this version Russia would not have taken any offensive action and would have waited to react to movements by Germany and Austria-Hungary. The defensive nature of Russian planning went back to
28390-580: Was legitimate: Bulgaria's entry into the war as Germany's ally in October caused serious alarm, as a land route from Germany to Turkey was now open and would allow for an unrestricted flow of German weapons to the Turks. A "window of opportunity" appeared that would allow the Russians to destroy the Turkish Third Army, as the British required assistance in Mesopotamia (now modern day Iraq). Britain's efforts to besiege Baghdad had been halted at Ctesiphon, and they were forced to retreat. This led to an increasing number of attacks by Turkish forces. The British requested
28560-423: Was mostly under the influence of the Bolsheviks and Anarchists, also caused strong concerns for the Provisional Government. As early as May 1917, the Kronstadt Soviet became the main authority in the city. An important role in the transition of Kronstadt sailors to the side of the Bolsheviks was played, at the time, by deputy chairman of the Kronstadt Council Fyodor Raskolnikov . A common conspiracy claim to explain
28730-509: Was the deliberate choice to not coordinate it with their allies in Austria-Hungary. Moltke the Younger wanted Austria to assist Germany by going on the offensive against Russia in the early stages of the war, and never told his Austrian counterpart, Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf , that Germany was not going have its own offensive in the east. Conrad, for his part, was also misleading the Germans by allowing them to think Austria would prioritize an attack against Russia, when he actually planned to focus
28900-402: 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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