143-529: Khasan ( Russian : Хаса́н ) is an urban locality (an urban-type settlement ) in Khasansky District of Primorsky Krai , Russia . It is located near the tripoint on the Tumen River where the borders of Russia, China and North Korea converge. Population: 742 ( 2010 Census ) ; 795 ( 2002 Census ) ; 1,187 ( 1989 Soviet census ) . Khasan is the only Russian-inhabited locality on
286-649: 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
429-456: A market economy and achieve consistent economic growth. In October 1991, Yeltsin announced that Russia would proceed with radical, market-oriented reform along the lines of " shock therapy ", as recommended by the United States and IMF. Hyperinflation resulted from the removal of Soviet price controls and the central bank's policy in the early 1990s. Jeffrey Sachs , an economist who advised
572-510: 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
715-450: A Chernomyrdin protégé who continued the tight-money policy that Paramonova had established. As of mid-1996, four and one-half years after the launching of Russia's post-Soviet economic reform, experts found the results promising but mixed. The Russian economy has passed through a long and wrenching depression. Official Russian economic statistics indicate that from 1990 to the end of 1995, Russian GDP declined by roughly 50%, far greater than
858-468: A chronic problem within state enterprises, and to improve the increasingly tattered social safety net. In fact, in 1995 and 1996 the state's failure to pay many such obligations (as well as the wages of most state workers) was a major factor in keeping Russia's budget deficit at a moderate level. Conditions changed by the second half of 1995. The members of the State Duma (beginning in 1994, the lower house of
1001-440: A dependence on short-term borrowing to finance budget deficits led to a serious financial crisis in 1998 , contributing to a sharp decline in Russia's earnings from oil exports and resulting in an exodus of foreign investors. The government allowed the ruble to fall precipitously and then stopped payment on $ 40 billion in ruble GKOs, the short-term treasury bonds widely held by foreign investors. In 1999, output increased for only
1144-555: A former automobile plant manager whose views were antireform. This move raised concerns in Russia and the West about Yeltsin's commitment to economic reform. Another casualty of the political atmosphere was RCB chairman Paramonova, whose nomination had remained a source of controversy between the State Duma and the Government. In November 1995, Yeltsin was forced to replace her with Sergey Dubinin,
1287-631: 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) Economic history of the Russian Federation After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of its centrally-planned economy , the Russian Federation succeeded it under president Boris Yeltsin . The Russian government used policies of shock therapy to liberalize
1430-558: 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
1573-479: 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
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#17328595548881716-572: 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
1859-633: A market system. In the Soviet economy, prices were an accounting mechanism only. The government established prices for all goods and services based on the role of the product in the plan and on other noneconomic criteria. This pricing system produced anomalies. For example, the price of bread, a traditional staple of the Russian diet, was below the cost of the wheat used to produce it. In some cases, farmers fed their livestock bread rather than grain because bread cost less. In another example, rental fees for apartments were set very low to achieve social equity, yet housing
2002-607: 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
2145-606: A more efficient social safety net for the unemployed and pensioners. The printing of money and domestic credit expansion moderated somewhat in 1993. In a public confrontation with the parliament, Yeltsin won a referendum on his economic reform policies that may have given the reformers some political clout to curb state expenditures. In May 1993, the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank agreed to macroeconomic measures, such as reducing subsidies and increasing revenues, to stabilize
2288-420: A policy that kept prices low by depressing demand. An important symptom of Russian macroeconomic instability has been severe fluctuations in the exchange rate of the ruble. From July 1992, when the ruble first could be legally exchanged for United States dollars, to October 1995, the rate of exchange between the ruble and the dollar declined from 144 rubles per US$ 1 to around 5,000 per US$ 1. Prior to July 1992,
2431-644: A primary goal of Russian economic policy. In January 1993, Fedorov announced a so-called anticrisis program to control inflation through tight monetary and fiscal policies. Under the program, the government would control money and credit emissions by requiring the RCB to increase interest rates on credits by issuing government bonds, by partially financing budget deficits, and by starting to close inefficient state enterprises. Budget deficits were to be brought under control by limiting wage increases for state enterprises, by establishing quarterly budget deficit targets, and by providing
2574-516: 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
2717-475: A sharp conflict with the parliament led Yeltsin to dismiss neoliberal reform advocate Yegor Gaidar as prime minister. Gaidar's successor was Viktor Chernomyrdin , a former head of the State Natural Gas Company ( Gazprom ). Chernomyrdin formed a new government with Boris Fedorov , an economic reformer, as deputy prime minister and finance minister. Fedorov considered macroeconomic stabilization
2860-471: A strong role in the growth of the city. Opposed by a weak police force, Moscow's rate of protection rackets, contract murders, kickbacks, and bribes — all intimately connected with the economic infrastructure — has remained among the highest in Russia. Most businesses have not been able to function without paying for some form of mafia protection, informally called a krysha (the Russian word for roof). Luzhkov, who has close ties to all legitimate power centers in
3003-545: A total length of 238 kilometers (148 mi). The end of the line was the Khasan station, located near Lake Khasan. The Khasan station opened for operation on September 28, 1951. It has long remained a dead-end: across the Tumen River, which forms the state border, a temporary wooden bridge was built, which carried its first working train into Korea in 1952. Exchange of goods between the Soviet Union and North Korea by rail through
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#17328595548883146-508: Is 1,435 mm ( 4 ft 8 + 1 ⁄ 2 in ) standard gauge . This line is currently little used, with only 10,000 passengers being carried in 2005. In 1988, the two-way cargo traffic exceeded 5 million tons annually, but by 2001 the total volume had dropped to only 144,000 tons. In 1989, 830,000 tons of freight passed through the border from Russia (Khasan) to North Korea (Tumangang). By 1998 this number stood at 150,000 tons, and by 2001, only 92,000 tons of freight crossed
3289-527: 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,
3432-475: 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
3575-401: 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
3718-593: 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
3861-587: 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
4147-613: 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
4290-538: Is highest. Yevgeniy Yasin, minister of economics, estimated that in 1995 some US$ 11 billion worth of goods entered Russia in this way. Shuttle traders have been vital in maintaining the standard of living of Russians who cannot afford consumer goods on the conventional market. However, domestic industries such as textiles suffer from this infusion of competing merchandise, whose movement is unmonitored, untaxed, and often mafia-controlled. The geographical distribution of Russia's wealth has been skewed at least as severely as it
4433-563: 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
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4576-564: 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
4719-407: Is playing an increasingly vital role in the economy, accounting for nearly half of GDP in 1995. The services sector's activities have not been adequately measured. Data on sector performance are skewed by the underreporting or nonreporting of output that Russia's tax laws encourage. According to Western analysts, by the end of 1995 more than half of GDP and more than 60% of the labor force were based in
4862-402: 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
5005-569: 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
5148-576: 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
5291-659: 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
5434-518: 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
5577-580: Is to last 49 years, with 70 percent of the shares belonging to Russia and 30 percent to North Korea. Russian railwaymen began renovating the Khasan-Rajin railway section in October 2008, and a demonstration train ran on the Rajin-Khasan route in October 2011. By the following February, a new dual gauge with the length of 32 kilometres has been laid at the Rajin-Khasan section, complete overhaul of 20 kilometres of
5720-461: 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
5863-966: 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
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6006-413: 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
6149-631: The Korean-Russian Friendship Bridge (Korean: 조로친선교). The North Korean station in Tumangang Workers' District , Sonbong , is directly across the river. Construction began on the railway line from Baranovsky railway station to a point 190 km away in the direction opposite of Kraskino , and was completed in 1941. After World War II , the Baranovski-Kraskino line was continued to the border with North Korea, resulting in
6292-501: The Ministry of Railways of Russia issuing a directive forbidding the passage of trains from Khasan to North Korea, effectively isolating North Korea from the Russian market. The crisis was resolved in September 1996, when North Korea agreed to pay $ 26 million of the debt. At the beginning of the 21st century the situation improved, and capital investments were made to improve and modernize
6435-575: 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
6578-638: 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
6721-548: The border with North Korea . It lies near Lake Khasan and the Tumen River . The border between Russia and North Korea is formed by the river, but the Tumen's course sometimes changes during floods, effectively diminishing the territory of Russia and threatening to flood the settlement of Khasan and the Peschanaya border station. Since 2003, work has been progressing to reinforce the area with rocky soil for protection against erosion by
6864-508: 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
7007-465: 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
7150-520: The Central Bank held money expansion to a monthly rate of 19%. It also substantially moderated the expansion of credits during that period. The 1993 annual inflation rate was around 1,000%, a sharp improvement over 1992, but still very high. The improvement figures were exaggerated, however, because state expenditures had been delayed from the last quarter of 1993 to the first quarter of 1994. State enterprise arrears, for example, had built up in 1993 to about 15 trillion rubles (about US$ 13 billion, according to
7293-457: The Central Bank, and nominating Tatyana Paramonova as his replacement. Although reformers in the Russian government and the IMF and other Western supporters greeted the appointment with skepticism, Paramonova was able to implement a tight monetary policy that ended cheap credits and restrained interest rates (although the money supply fluctuated in 1995). Furthermore, the parliament passed restrictions on
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#17328595548887436-414: The Central Bank, headed by Viktor Gerashchenko, loosened the reins on the money supply. In the second and third quarters of 1992, the money supply had increased at especially sharp rates of 34% and 30%, respectively. By the end of 1992, the Russian money supply had increased by eighteen times. This led directly to high inflation and to a deterioration in the exchange rate of the ruble. The sharp increase in
7579-546: The Central Bank. In 1992, the first year of economic reform, retail prices in Russia increased by 2,520%. A major cause of the increase was the deregulation of most of the prices in January 1992, a step that prompted an average price increase of 245% in that month alone. By 1993 the annual rate had declined to 240%, still a very high figure. In 1994 the inflation rate had improved to 224%. Trends in annual inflation rates mask variations in monthly rates, however. In 1994, for example,
7722-630: The Federal Assembly, Russia's parliament) faced elections in December, and Yeltsin faced dim prospects in his 1996 presidential reelection bid. Therefore, political conditions caused both Duma deputies and the president to make promises to increase spending. In addition, late in 1995 Yeltsin dismissed Anatoly Chubais , one of the last economic reform advocates remaining in a top Government position, as deputy prime minister in charge of economic policy. In place of Chubais, Yeltsin named Vladimir Kadannikov ,
7865-519: 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,
8008-578: 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
8151-406: The Khasan station began in 1954. Sixty-five cars or 1,300 tons of cargo were exported from North Korea, with 153 cars or 3,123 tons of cargo being imported. In 1955, 530 cars or 7,200 tons were exported from North Korea, while 295 cars or 4,800 tons of cargo were imported. Two years later, Khasan station exports had grown an incredible fourteen-fold and imports sixteen-fold. The temporary wooden bridge
8294-459: The McDonald's fast-food chain, which began operations in Moscow in 1990, enjoyed immediate success but expanded only in Moscow. The concentration of Russia's banking industry in Moscow gave the city a huge advantage in competing for foreign commercial activity. In mid-1996 the national government appeared to have achieved some degree of macroeconomic stability. However, longer-term stability depends on
8437-515: 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
8580-807: 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
8723-465: The Russian government on the reforms, said that the shock therapy reforms failed in Russia (after having succeeded in Poland two years before) due to loose monetary policy by the central bank and the lack of financial support of the transition by the West. He explains the latter by the US government viewing Poland as an ally and Russia as an antagonist. Assuming the role as the continuing legal personality of
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#17328595548888866-458: 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
9009-410: The Soviet Union, Russia took up the responsibility for settling the USSR's external debts . The Russian GDP contracted an estimated 40% between 1991 and 1998, despite the country's wealth of natural resources, its well-educated population, and its diverse – although increasingly dilapidated – industrial base. Some economists said that this figure may be misleading, since much of the Soviet Union's GDP
9152-405: The Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent. In Uzbekistan , Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian
9295-651: The Soviet-style financing of favored industries. By the end of 1992, the Russian budget deficit was 20% of GDP, much higher than the 5% projected under the economic program and stipulated under the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditions for international funding. This budget deficit was financed largely by expanding the money supply. These monetary and fiscal policies were a factor along with price liberalization in an inflation rate of over 2,000% in 1992. In late 1992, deteriorating economic conditions and
9438-506: The State Planning Committee ( Gosudarstvennyy planovyy komitet — Gosplan ) formulated countrywide output targets for stipulated planning periods. Regional planning bodies then refined these targets for economic units such as state industrial enterprises and state farms ( sovkhozy ; sing., sovkhoz ) and collective farms ( kolkhozy ; sing., kolkhoz ), each of which had its own specific output plan. Central planning operated on
9581-478: The United Kingdom; and twice that of China or India. Russia was a late industrializer . Serfdom , which held back development of the wage labor market and created a shortage of labor for industry, was abolished in 1861. In the aftermath, GDP per capita was volatile and did not substantially increase. Steady economic growth began in the 1890s, alongside a structural transformation of the Russian economy. By
9724-460: 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
9867-446: The ability of policy makers to withstand the inflationary pressures of demands for state subsidies and easier credits for failing enterprises and other special interests. (Chubais estimated that spending promises made during Yeltsin's campaign amounted to US$ 250 per voter, which if actually spent would approximately double the national budget deficit; most of Yeltsin's pledges seemingly were forgotten shortly after his reelection.) By 1996
10010-457: The amount of unpaid interenterprise loans had reached 3.2 trillion rubles (about US$ 20 billion), the government froze interenterprise debts. Shortly thereafter, the government provided 181 billion rubles (about US$ 1.1 billion) in credits to enterprises that were still holding debt. The government also failed to constrain its own expenditures in this period, partially under the influence of the post-Soviet Supreme Soviet of Russia , which encouraged
10153-489: The assumption that if each unit met or exceeded its plan, then demand and supply would balance. The government's role was to ensure that the plans were fulfilled. Responsibility for production flowed from the top down. At the national level, some seventy government ministries and state committees, each responsible for a production sector or subsector, supervised the economic production activities of units within their areas of responsibility. Regional ministerial bodies reported to
10296-469: The basis of a centrally planned economy, with a state control over virtually all means of production and over investment, production, and consumption decisions throughout the economy. Economic policy was made according to directives from the Communist Party , which controlled all aspects of economic activity. Since the collapse of Communism in the early 1990s, Russia has experienced difficulties in making
10439-516: The beginning of the reign of Nicholas II, it began to change dramatically in economic terms. It was the fastest growing economy in the world, the average GDP growth was higher than the Western European one, and the volume of production per capita was equal to it. The standard of living also grew high. For about 69 years, the Russian economy and that of the rest of the Soviet Union operated on
10582-594: The border, according to the Far East customs office. The Korean portion from Tumangang to the port of Rajin was destroyed in the 1950s. Throughout the 1990s, the state of the railroad deteriorated sharply due to the economic crisis in Russia . By 1996, North Korea owed $ 20 million to the Russian railway operator, Russian Railways . This debt had accumulated over the previous 5 years as North Korea seized and used Russian train cars that were in North Korea. The situation led to
10725-403: 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
10868-407: The city government also acquired full or major interests in a wide variety of enterprises — from banking, hotels, and construction to bakeries and beauty salons. Such ownership has allowed Luzhkov's planners to manipulate resources efficiently and with little or no competition. Meanwhile, Moscow also became the center of foreign investment in Russia, often to the exclusion of other regions. For example,
11011-498: The city, has overseen the construction of sports stadiums, shopping malls, monuments to Moscow's history, and the ornate Christ the Savior Cathedral. In 1994 Yeltsin gave Luzhkov full control over all state property in Moscow. In the first half of 1996, the city privatized state enterprises at the rate of US$ 1 billion per year, a faster rate than the entire national privatization process in the same period. Under Luzhkov's leadership,
11154-418: The country in an enormous capital flight . The largest state enterprises were controversially privatized by President Boris Yeltsin to insiders for far less than they were worth. Many Russians consider these infamous " oligarchs " to be thieves. Through their immense wealth, the oligarchs wielded significant political influence. Government efforts to take over the credit expansion also proved ephemeral in
11297-562: 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
11440-525: The decline that the United States experienced during the Great Depression . (However, alternative estimates by Western neoliberal pro-disregulation analysts described a much less severe decline, taking into account the upward bias of Soviet-era economic data and the downward bias of post-Soviet data. E.g. IMF estimates: [1] ) Much of the decline in production has occurred in the military–industrial complex and other heavy industries that benefited most from
11583-656: The early years of the transition. Domestic credit increased about nine times between the end of 1991 and 1992. The credit expansion was caused in part by the buildup of enterprise arrears and the RCB's subsequent financing of those arrears. The Government restricted financing to state enterprises after it lifted controls on prices in January 1992, but enterprises faced cash shortages because the decontrol of prices cut demand for their products. Instead of curtailing production, most firms chose to build up inventories. To support continued production under these circumstances, enterprises relied on loans from other enterprises. By mid-1992, when
11726-515: The economic infrastructure, such as commercial banking and authoritative, comprehensive commercial laws, were absent or only partly in place by 1996. Although by the mid-1990s a return to Soviet-era central planning seemed unlikely, the configuration of the post-transition economy remained unpredictable. In January 1992, the government clamped down on money and credit creation at the same time that it lifted price controls. However, beginning in February,
11869-454: The economic priorities of Soviet planners but have much less robust demand in a free market. But other major sectors such as agriculture, energy, and light industry also suffered from the transition. To enable these sectors to function in a market system, inefficient enterprises had to be closed and workers laid off, with resulting declines in output and consumption. Analysts had expected that Russia's GDP would begin to rise in 1996, but data for
12012-563: The economy and 40% of its cash turnover. By the end of 1997, Russia had achieved some progress. Inflation had been brought under control, the ruble was stabilized, and an ambitious privatization program had transferred thousands of enterprises to private ownership. Some important market-oriented laws had also been passed, including a commercial code governing business relations and the establishment of an arbitration court for resolving economic disputes. But in 1998 difficulties in implementing fiscal reforms aimed at raising government revenues and
12155-597: The economy as part of the transition to a market economy , causing a sustained economic recession . GDP per capita levels returned to their 1991 levels by the mid-2000s. The economy of Russia is much more stable today than in the early 1990s, but inflation still remains an issue. Historically and currently, the Russian economy has differed sharply from major developed economies because of its weak legal system, underdevelopment of modern economic activities, technological backwardness, and lower living standards. Russian national income per capita increased and moved to closer to
12298-553: The economy with the rest of the world, was an important aid in reaching these goals. The Gorbachev regime failed to address these fundamental goals. At the time of the Soviet Union's demise, the Yeltsin government of the Russian Republic had begun to attack the problems of macroeconomic stabilization and economic restructuring. By mid-1996, the results were mixed. Since collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has tried to develop
12441-413: The economy. The Central Bank was to raise the discount lending rate to reflect inflation. Based on positive early results from this policy, the IMF extended the first payment of US$ 1.5 billion to Russia from a special Systemic Transformation Facility (STF) the following July. Fedorov's anticrisis program and the Government's accord with the Central Bank had some effect. In the first three quarters of 1993,
12584-427: The end of 1996, beginning between 5,000 and 5,600 per US$ 1 and ending between 5,500 and 6,100. Another sign of currency stabilization was the announcement that effective June 1996, the ruble would become fully convertible on a current-account basis. This meant that Russian citizens and foreigners would be able to convert rubles to other currencies for trade transactions. In the Soviet era, all enterprises belonged to
12727-413: 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,
12870-451: 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
13013-491: The first six months of the year showed a continuing decline, and some Russian experts predicted a new phase of economic crisis in the second half of the year. The pain of the restructuring has been assuaged somewhat by the emergence of a new private sector. Western experts believe that Russian data overstate the dimensions of Russia's economic collapse by failing to reflect a large portion of the country's private-sector activity. The Russian services sector, especially retail sales,
13156-617: 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
13299-480: 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
13442-537: The government managed to reduce monthly rates from 21% in January to 4% in August, but rates climbed once again, to 16.4% by December and 18% by January 1995. Instability in Russian monetary policy caused the variations. After tightening the flow of money early in 1994, the Government loosened its restrictions in response to demands for credits by agriculture, industries in the Far North, and some favored large enterprises. In 1995
13585-407: The mid-1993 exchange rate). In June 1994, Chernomyrdin presented a set of moderate reforms calculated to accommodate the more conservative elements of the Government and parliament while placating reformers and Western creditors. The prime minister pledged to move ahead with restructuring the economy and pursuing fiscal and monetary policies conducive to macroeconomic stabilization. But stabilization
13728-433: The money supply was influenced by large foreign currency deposits that state-run enterprises and individuals had built up, and by the depreciation of the ruble. Enterprises drew on these deposits to pay wages and other expenses after the Government had tightened restrictions on monetary emissions. Commercial banks monetized enterprise debts by drawing down accounts in foreign banks and drawing on privileged access to accounts in
13871-405: The most developed economies of Northern and Western Europe from the late 17th century to the 1740s. After the 1740s, the Russian economy stagnated and declined. In the 18th century, Russian national income per capita was about 40–70% of British per capita income but higher than Poland's. By 1860, Russian GDP per capita was similar to that of Japan; one-third of GDP per capita in the United States or
14014-427: The national-level ministries and controlled economic units in their respective geographical areas. The plans incorporated output targets for raw materials and intermediate goods as well as final goods and services. In theory, but not in practice, the central planning system ensured a balance among the sectors throughout the economy. Under central planning, the state performed the allocation functions that prices perform in
14157-516: 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
14300-515: 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
14443-540: The other side of the "vicious circle", reliance on an outmoded production system guaranteed that product quality would remain low and uncompetitive. Most prices were left to the market, although local and regional governments control the prices of some staples. Energy prices remain controlled, but the Government has been shifting these prices upward to close the gap with world market prices. A 1996 government report quantified so-called "shadow economy" which yields no taxes or government statistics as accounting for about 51% of
14586-455: 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,
14729-467: The owner of the same enterprise. During the same period, violent criminal groups often took over state enterprises, clearing the way by assassinations or extortion. Corruption of government officials became an everyday rule of life. Under the government's cover, outrageous financial manipulations were performed that enriched the narrow group of individuals at key positions of the business and government mafia . Many took billions in cash and assets outside of
14872-446: 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
15015-443: The pattern was avoided more successfully by maintaining the tight monetary policy adopted early in the year and by passing a relatively stringent budget. Thus, the monthly inflation rate held virtually steady below 5% in the last quarter of the year. For the first half of 1996, the inflation rate was 16.5%. However, experts noted that control of inflation was aided substantially by the failure to pay wages to workers in state enterprises,
15158-453: 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
15301-439: The period to June 1996. The announcement reflected strengthened fiscal and monetary policies and the buildup of reserves with which the government could defend the ruble. By the end of October 1995, the ruble had stabilized and actually appreciated in inflation-adjusted terms. It remained stable during the first half of 1996. In May 1996, a "crawling band" exchange rate was introduced to allow the ruble to depreciate gradually through
15444-455: 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
15587-418: 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
15730-463: The private sector. An important but unconventional service in Russia's economy is "shuttle trading" — the transport and sale of consumer goods by individual entrepreneurs, of whom 5 to 10 million were estimated to be active in 1996. Traders buy goods in foreign countries such as China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates and in Russian cities, then sell them on the domestic market where demand
15873-475: 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
16016-466: 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 ,
16159-634: The railway line to North Korea. Under the deal, the two countries will renovate the rail line from Russia's border town of Khasan to the North Korean port of Rajin, where sea cargo to and from North Korea could be unloaded. To implement the project, the Russian Railways Trading House and the Port of Rajin set up a joint venture. It will ensure investments in the project, as well as employing contractors for design and construction work. The joint venture
16302-463: The railway system in the area. The rail station got a new roof in 2002, and the railroad bed was raised, using crushed stones, in 2002/3. In 2001, Russian Railways laid a fiber optic link from Ussuriysk to Khasan railway station, which made it possible to connect Khasan to the unified data system of the trains in the Far East . In April 2008, Russia and North Korea signed a long-awaited deal to rebuild
16445-491: 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
16588-517: The river. There is an unobtrusive Russian outpost near the border with a large radar array. On the North Korean side of the border lies Tumangang . The closest Chinese town is Fangchuan . Khasan has a railway station on the Baranovsky-Khasan railway line from Vladivostok to Rason in North Korea . It is the link between Russia and North Korea, by a rail bridge over the Tumen River called
16731-433: The ruble on interbank exchange markets plunged by 27%. Although experts presented a number of theories to explain the drop, including the existence of a conspiracy , the loosening of credit and monetary controls clearly was a significant cause of declining confidence in the Russian economy and its currency. In late 1994, Yeltsin reasserted his commitment to macroeconomic stabilization by firing Viktor Gerashchenko , head of
16874-532: The ruble's rate was set artificially at a highly overvalued level. But rapid changes in the nominal rate (the rate that does not account for inflation) reflected the overall macroeconomic instability. The most drastic example of such fluctuation was the Black Tuesday (1994) 27% reduction in the ruble's value. In July 1995, the Central Bank announced its intention to maintain the ruble within a band of 4,300 to 4,900 per US$ 1 through October 1995, but it later extended
17017-461: The second time since 1991, by an officially estimated 6.4%, regaining 4.6% drop of 1998. This increase was achieved despite a year of potential turmoil that included the tenure of three premiers and culminated in the New Year's Eve resignation of President Boris Yeltsin. Of great help was the tripling of international oil prices in the second half of 1999, raising the export surplus to $ 29 billion. On
17160-556: The settlement of Razdolnoye , Nadezhdinsky District was completed in November 2007. In April 2015 Deputy Ministers of Transport of Russia and North Korea, Nikolai Asaul and Kwok Il-ryong , signed an agreement on developing a road connection between Russia and North Korea. Khasan has a four-season humid continental climate ( Dfb ) typical of Primorsky Krai. Due to its sheltered and southerly location, it contains lesser seasonal swings than northerly inland areas. As typical of this area of
17303-626: The size of the Russian economy. Adjusted by a purchasing-power parity formula to account for the lower cost of living in Russia, the 1994 Russian GDP was about US$ 678 billion, making the Russian economy approximately 10% of the United States economy. In 1994 the adjusted Russian GDP was US$ 4,573 per capita, approximately 19% of that of the United States. During most of 1995, the government maintained its commitment to tight fiscal constraints, and budget deficits remained within prescribed parameters. However, in 1995 pressures mounted to increase government spending to alleviate wage arrearages, which were becoming
17446-420: The state and were supposed to be equally owned among all citizens. Privatization transferred much of this wealth into the hands of a few, making them immensely rich. Stocks of the state-owned enterprises were issued, and these new publicly traded companies were quickly handed to the members of Nomenklatura or known criminal bosses. For example, the director of a factory during the Soviet regime would often become
17589-503: The structure of Russian economic output had shifted far enough that it more closely resembled that of a developed market economy than the distorted Soviet central-planning model. With the decline in demand for defense industry goods, overall production has shifted from heavy industry to consumer production. However, in the mid-1990s the low quality of most domestically produced consumer goods continued to limit enterprises' profits and therefore their ability to modernize production operations. On
17732-626: 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
17875-459: 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
18018-577: The time World War I started, more than half the Russian economy was still devoted to agriculture. By the early 20th century, the Russian economy had fallen further behind the American and British economies. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the economy grew at a similar pace as the Japanese economy and faster than the Brazilian, Indian and Chinese economies. Despite all this Russian Empire from
18161-428: The tracks has been made, railroad switches and tracks were installed, a number of stations reconstructed, the work in the tunnels was started, trunk telecommunication lines and electrical interlocking lines were stretched and drainage structures restored. Coal transport from North Korea started in summer 2014. The reconstructed Khasan-Razdolnoye Road connecting Khasan, the ports of Zarubino and Posyet , and
18304-422: The transition from a centrally planned economy to a market based economy . Much of the structure of the Soviet economy that operated until 1987 originated under the leadership of Joseph Stalin , with only incidental modifications made between 1953 and 1987. Five-year plan and annual plans were the chief mechanisms the Soviet government used to translate economic policies into programs. According to those policies,
18447-461: The transition from central planning to a market-based economy. The former entailed implementing fiscal and monetary policies that promote economic growth in an environment of stable prices and exchange rates. The latter required establishing the commercial, and institutional entities — banks, private property, and commercial legal codes— that permit the economy to operate efficiently. Opening domestic markets to foreign trade and investment, thus linking
18590-770: 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
18733-470: The use of monetary policy to finance the state debt, and the Ministry of Finance began to issue government bonds at market rates to finance the deficits. According to official Russian data, in 1994 the national gross domestic product (GDP) was 604 trillion rubles (about US$ 207 billion according to the 1994 exchange rate), or about 4% of the United States GDP for that year. But this figure underestimates
18876-506: 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
19019-526: The war permitted the Soviet Union to become a superpower. The attempts and failures of reformers during the era of perestroika (restructuring) in the regime of Mikhail Gorbachev (1985–91) attested to the complexity of the challenge. After 1991, under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin , the country made a significant turn toward developing a market economy by implanting basic tenets such as market-determined prices. Two fundamental and interdependent goals — macroeconomic stabilization and economic restructuring —
19162-682: 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
19305-547: The world, the East Asian monsoon in summer and the Siberian High in winter are the main drivers of the local climate, resulting in wet and humid and also warm to hot summers. August temperatures are around 22 °C (72 °F) in terms of mean temperatures, bordering on a hot-summer subtype of the climate type ( Köppen climate classification Dwa). This is followed by cold and dry winters. Russian language Russian
19448-415: Was military spending and the production of goods for which there was little demand. The discontinuation of much of that wasteful spending created the false impression of larger than actual economic contraction. Critical elements such as privatization of state enterprises and extensive foreign investment were rushed into place in the first few years of the post-Soviet period. But other fundamental parts of
19591-405: 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
19734-421: 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
19877-487: Was in Soviet times. By the mid-1990s, economic power was being concentrated in Moscow at an even faster rate than the federal government was losing political power in the rest of the country. In Moscow an economic oligarchy, composed of politicians, banks, businesspeople, security forces, and city agencies, controlled a huge percentage of Russia's financial assets under the rule of Moscow's energetic and popular mayor, Yuriy Luzhkov . Unfortunately, organized crime also has played
20020-463: Was in extremely short supply. Soviet industries obtained raw materials such as oil, natural gas, and coal at prices below world market levels, encouraging waste. The central planning system allowed Soviet leaders to marshal resources quickly in times of crisis, such as the Nazi invasion, and to reindustrialize the country during the postwar period. The rapid development of its defence and industrial base after
20163-407: Was inadequate for the increasing traffic, so in 1959 a joint decision was made to build a bridge with metal spans on stone abutments, called the "Friendship Bridge". It was commissioned on August 9, 1959. There is a break of gauge between the two railroads since the Russian railroad system is 1,520 mm ( 4 ft 11 + 27 ⁄ 32 in ) and the North Korean railroad system
20306-402: 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
20449-409: Was undermined by the Central Bank, which issued credits to enterprises at subsidized rates, and by strong pressure from industrial and agricultural lobbies seeking additional credits. By October 1994, inflation, which had been reduced by tighter fiscal and monetary policies early in 1994, began to soar once again to dangerous levels. On 11 October, a day that became known as Black Tuesday, the value of
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