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The history proper of the Russian language dates from just before the turn of the second millennium.
NOTE. In the following sections, all examples of vocabulary are given in their modern spelling.
Note. Many Russian historians of the East Slavic region equate Russia with an earlier political state called Rus' (Русь). Other scholars consider Russia to have developed later from Slavic settlements amidst the Finno-Ugric areas of the northeastern hinterlands of Rus'.
The question of the ethnic origins of the modern Russians is charged with politics and accusations of imperialism and revanchism. The very name Russia (Россия /ross'ija/) does not have an uncontested etymology. Nevertheless, judging by the historical records, by approximately 900 AD, the predominant ethnic group over much of modern European Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus was the Eastern branch of the Slavs, speaking a closely related group of dialects that had emerged following the breakup of Common Slavonic in approximately the middle third of the first millennium. Whether or not this ethnic group is autochthonous is a matter of scientific debate. So too are the degrees and timelines of its mixing or coalescence with other tribes that have shared the geographical space or have come into it. But the history proper of Russia, its dominant people, and their language begins more or less at the turn of the tenth century C.E. Prior tradition, as recognized already by the Russian historian Karamzin (c. 1800), is dark, or, at least, not well preserved.
There are references, in Arab and Byzantine sources, that pre-Christian Slavs in European Russia used some form of writing. Despite some suggestive archaelogical finds and a corroboration by the tenth-century monk Khrabr that ancient Slavs wrote in "strokes and incisions" (черты и резы /tSert1 i r'ez1/), the exact nature of this system is not known. Recent amateur investigations in Russia have proposed that this was a syllabic system that may have survived, possibly into the twentieth century, in cryptography (тайнопись /tajnop'is'/), but scholars have reached no consensus beyond undecidability.
The Book of Veles, said to have been found during the Russian civil war and to have disappeared in WWII, would, if genuine, provide about the only surviving pre-Christian Russian literary monument. Since the account of its find and eventual fate (several photographs are claimed to survive) has not been confirmed, and its language deviates from the accepted reconstruction, most professional linguists have so far dismissed the book's authenticity.
The political unification of this region into the state called Kievan Rus, from which both modern Russia and Ukraine trace their origins, accurred approximately a century before the adoption of Christianity in 988 and the establishment of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and literary language. Documentation of the language of this period is scanty, making it difficult at best fully to determine the relationship between the literary language and its spoken dialects. It is known, however, that borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the vernacular at this time, and that simultaneously the literary language in its turn began to be modified towards Eastern Slavic.
| краткий | /kratk'ij/ | ОCS = ESl короткий | "brief" |
| короткий | /korotk'ij/ | ESl = CS краткий | "short" |
| вивлиофика | /v'ivl'iof'ika/ | Gr bibliotheke via OCS | "library" (archaic form) |
| правописание | /pravop'isan'je/ | Gr orthographe via OCS calque правыи: /prav1i/=orthos "correct", писати/p'isat'i/=grapho "write" | "spelling, orthography" |
Although the Glagolitic alphabet was briefly introduced, as witnessed by church inscriptions in Novgorod, it was soon entirely superseded by the Cyrillic. The samples of birch-bark writing excavated in Novgorod have provided crucial information about the pure tenth-century vernacular in North-West Russia, almost entirely free of church influence.
Surviving literary monuments from this period include the Русская правда/russkaja pravda/, the legal code of Yaroslav the Wise (1072), and a corpus of hagiography and homily, which are usually included in a survey of Russian because characteristic divergences from Old Church Slavonic are already evident.
Dialectal differentiation in the language spoken by the Eastern Slavs is apparent from the earliest period, but accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus' and the incorporation of its western regions into Lithuanian and Polish states after periods of local independence, and was assisted by the conquest of its eastern regions by the Mongols in the twelfth century. Nonetheless, the vernacular language of the conquered remained firmly Slavic. Altaic borrowings in Russian relate mostly to commerce and the military:
| товар | /tovar/ | Turk.-Altaic | "commercial goods" |
| лошадь | /loSad'/ | Turk.-Altaic | "horse" |
The modern phonological system of Russian was established during this period after the fall of the yers.
Literary monuments from this period include the epic Song of Igor (Слово о полку игореве /slovo o polku igor'ev'e/) and the earliest surviving manuscript of the Primary Chronicle (Повесть временных лет /pov'est' vrem'enn1x l'et/), the Laurentian codex (Лаврентьевский список /lavr'ent'jevskij sp'isok/) of 1377.
After the disestablishment of the "Tartar yoke" (татарское иго /tataskoje igo/) in the late fourteenth century, both the political centre and the predominant dialect in European Russia came to be based in Moscow. A scientific consensus exists that Russian and Ukrainian had definitely become distinct by this time at the latest (according to some linguists and historians, even earlier). The official language in Russia remained a kind of Church Slavonic until the close of the seventeenth century, but, despite attempts at standardization, as by Meletius Smotritsky c. 1620, its purity was by then strongly compromised by an incipient secular literature. There was borrowing of vocabulary from Polish, and, though it, from German and other Western European languages. At the same time, a number of words of native (by overall consent of the Russian etymologists) coinage or adaptation appeared, at times replacing or supplementing the inherited Indo-European/Common Slavonic vocabulary.
| глаз | /glaz/ | R; supplements ComSl око /oko/ = Lat oculus = E eye | "eye" |
| жупан | /Zupan/ | P župan | "a kind of cloak" |
| брак | /brak/ | G Brack | "a reject product" |
Much annalistic, hagiographic, and poetic material survives from the early Muscovite period. Nonetheless, a significant amount of philosophic and secular literature is known to have been destroyed after being proclaimed heretical.
The material following the election of the Romanov dynasty in 1613 following the Time of Troubles is rather more complete. Modern Russian literature is considered to have begun in the seventeenth century, with the autobiography of Avvakum and a corpus of chronique scandaleuse short stories from Moscow.
The political reforms of Peter the Great were accompanied by a reform of the alphabet, and achieved their goal of secularization and Westernization. Blocks of specialized vocabulary were adopted from the languages of Western Europe. Most of the modern naval vocabulary, for example, is of Dutch origin. Latin, French, and German words entered Russian for the intellectual categories of the Age of Enlightenment. Greek words already in the language through Church Slavonic were refashioned to reflect post-Renaissance European rather than Byzantine pronunciation. By 1800, a significant portion of the gentry spoke French, less often German, on an everyday basis.
| мачта | /matSta/ | D mast | "mast" |
| интерес | /int'er'es/ | G Interesse/Fr interêt | "interest" |
| библиотека | /b'ibl'iot'eka/ | Gr bibliotheke via Fr. bibliothèque | "library" (modern form) |
At the same time, there began explicit attempts to fashion a modern literary language as a compromise between Church Slavonic, the native vernacular, and the style of Western Europe. The writers Lomonosov, Derzhavin, and Karamzin made notable efforts in this respect, but, as per the received notion, the final synthesis belongs to Pushkin and his contemporaries in the first third of the nineteenth century.
During the nineteenth century, the standard language assumed its modern form; literature flourished. Spurred perhaps by the so-called Slavophilism, some Westernisms (виктория /v'iktorija/ > победа /pob'eda/, "victory") fashionable during the eighteenth century now passed out of use, and formerly vernacular or dialectal strata entered the literature as the "speech of the people". Borrowings of political, scientific and technical terminology continued. By about 1900, commerce and fashion ensured the first wave of mass adoptions from English.
| социализм | /sots'ializm/ | Intl/G Sozialismus | "socialism" |
| конституция | /konst'itutsija/ | Intl/Lat constitutio | "constitution" |
| антимония | /ant'imonija/ | Gk antinomia, metathesis | "useless debate, argument or quarrel" |
| брекфаст | /brekfast/ (note unpalatalized /bre-/ in 19th c. | E | "breakfast" (dead fashionable slang) |
| прейскурант | /pr'ejskurant/ (the original unpalatalized pronunciation of /pre-/ is still heard) | G Preiskurant/ Fr prix-courant | "price list" |
The political upheavals of the early twentieth century and the wholesale changes of political ideology gave written Russian its modern appearance after the spelling reform of 1918. Reformed spelling, the new political terminology, and the abandonment of the effusive formulae of politeness characteristic of the pre-Revolutionary upper classes prompted dire statements from members of the emigré intelligentsia that Russian was becoming debased. But the authoritarian nature of the regime, the system of schooling it provided from the 1930s, and not least the often unexpressed yearning among the literati for the former days ensured a fairly static maintenance of Russian into the 1980s. Though the language did evolve, it changed very gradually. Indeed, while literacy became nearly universal, dialectal differentiation declined, especially in the vocabulary: schooling and mass communications ensured a common denominator. Political circumstances and the undoubted accomplishments of the superpower in military, scientific, and technological matters (especially cosmonautics), gave Russian a world-wide if occasionally grudging prestige, most strongly felt during the middle third of the twentieth century.
| большевик | /bol'Sev'ik/ | R | "Bolshevik" (lit. "person of the majority", after the events of the 1903 Party congress) |
| Комсомол | /komsomol/ | Abbreviated agglutination: Союз коммунистической молодёжи /sojuz kommun'ist'itS'eskoj molod'oZ1/ | "Communist Youth League" |
| рабфак | /rabfak/ | Abbreviated agglutination: рабочий факультет /rabotS'ij fakul't'et/ |
"trade school" |
The collapse of 1990-91 loosened the shackles. In the face of economic uncertainties and difficulties within the educational system, the language changed rapidly. Fashion for ways and things Western prompted a wave of adoptions, mostly from English, and sometimes for words with exact native equivalents. At the same time, the growing public presence of the Russian Orthodox Church and public debate about the history of the nation gave new impetus to the most archaic Church Slavonic stratum of the language, and introduced or reintroduced words and concepts that replicate the linguistic models of the earliest period.
| младостарчество | /mladostartS'estvo/ | R/CS, agglutination: CS младый /mlad1j/ = R молодой /molodoj/ "young", R/CS старец /star'ets/ = "old man with spriritual wisdom" | term applied (in condemnation) by the Russian Orthodox Church to the phenomenon of immature newly-ordained priests assuming an unwarranted excessive control over the private life of the members of the congregation. |
| юсфульный | /jusful'n1j/ | E | "useful" (live fashionable slang) |
Russian today is a tongue in great flux. The new words entering the language and the emerging new styles of expression have, naturally, not been received with universal approbation. Time will show which way the language will go.
The following excerpts illustrate (very briefly) the development of the literary language. They have been chosen because they are to this day presented in Russian schools and universities as illuminations of linguistic and social history.
NOTE. The spelling has been partly modernized. The translations attempt to be as literal as possible; they are not literary.
c. 1110, from the Laurentian Codex, 1377
Се пов&#сти врем&#ньнъıх лт . Откуду єсть пошла руска зем . кто въ києв нача первє кнжити . и откуду руска земл стала єсть.
These [are] the tales of the bygone years, whence is come the Russian land, who first began to rule at Kiev, and whence the Russian land has come about.
Слово о пълку Игорев. c. 1200(?), from the Catherine manuscript, c. 1790.
Не лпо ли ны бяшетъ братіе, начати старыми словесы трудныхъ повстій о полку Игорев, Игоря Святъ славича? Начатижеся тъ псни по былинамъ сего времени, а не по замышленію Бояню. Боянъ бо вщій, аще кому хотяше псн творити, то растекашется мысію по древу, срымъ волкомъ по земли, шизымъ орломъ подъ облакы.
Would it not be meet, o brothers, for us to begin with the old words the difficult telling of the host of Igor, Igor Sviatoslavich? And to begin in the way of the true tales of this time, and not in the way of Boyan's inventions. For the wise Boyan, if he wished to devote to someone [his] song, would wander like a squirrel over a tree, like a grey wolf over land, like a bluish eagle beneath the clouds.
Avvakum's autobiography
1672-1673. Modernized spelling.
Таже послали меня в Сибирь с женою и детьми. И колико дорогою нужды бысть, тово всево много говорить, разве малая часть помянуть. Протопопица младенца родила; больную в телеге и повезли до Тобольска; три тысящи верст недель с тринадцеть волокли телегами и водою и саньми половину пути.
And then they sent me to Siberia with my wife and children. Whatever hardship there was on the way, there's too much to say it all, but maybe a small part to be mentioned. [My wife] (lit, the archpriest's wife) gave birth to a baby; and we carted her, sick, all the way to Tobolsk; for three thousand versts, around thirteen weeks in all, we dragged the carts, and by water, and in sledges half of the way.
From "Winter Evening" (Зимний вечер), 1825. Modern spelling.
Буря мглою небо кроет,
Вихри снежные крутя;
То, как зверь, она завоет,
То заплачет, как дитя,
То по кровле обветшалой
Вдруг соломой зашумит,
То, как путник запоздалый,
К нам в окошко застучит.
Tempest covers sky in haze[s],
Twisting whirls [in driven] snow,
Like a beast begins to howl,
Like a child it wails [anew].
On the worn-out roof it clamours
Suddenly upon the thatch,
Then, as though a traveller tardy
Starts to knock upon our hatch. (lit., window)
Feodor Dostoevsky
From Crime and Punishment (Преступление и наказание), 1866. Modern spelling.
В начале июля, в чрезвычайно жаркое время, под вечер, один молодой человек вышел из своей каморки, которую нанимал от жильцов в С-м переулке, на улицу и медленно, как бы в нерешимости, отправился к К-ну мосту.
In early July, during a spell of extraordinary heat, towards evening, a young man went out from his garret, which he sublet in S. Lane, [entered] the street, and slowly, as though in [the grip of] indecision, began to make his way to K. Bridge.
Fundamental laws of the Russian Empire
Основные законы Российской Империи (Constitution of the Russian Empire), 1906. Modern spelling.
Императору Всероссийскому принадлежит Верховная Самодержавная Власть. Повиноваться власти Его не только за страх, но и за совесть Сам Бог повелевает.
To the Emperor of all Russia belongs the Supreme Autocratic Power. To obey His power, not merely in fear but also in conscience, God Himself does ordain.
From The Master and Margarita (Мастер и Маргарита), 1930-1940
Вы всегда были горячим проповедником той теории, что по отрезании головы жизнь в человеке прекращается, он превращается в золу и уходит в небытие. Мне приятно сообщить вам, в присутствии моих гостей, хотя они и служат доказательством совсем другой теории, о том, что ваша теория и солидна и остроумна. Впрочем, ведь все теории стоят одна другой. Есть среди них и такая, согласно которой каждому будет дано по его вере. Да сбудется же это!
You have always been a passionate proponent of the theory that upon decapitation human life comes to an end, the human being transforms into ashes, and passes into oblivion. I am pleased to inform you, in the presence of my guests, though they serve as a proof for another theory altogether, that your theory is both well-grounded and ingenious. Mind you, all theories are worth one another. Among them is one, according to which every one shall receive in line with his faith. May that come to be!
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