History of Russian language

Russian language, language of Russian nation, belongs to the most widespread languages of the world. It is an official and working language of the United Nations. According to census of 1970, number of speaking in Russian language – approximately 183 million. 

The beginnings of Russian language one should seek in antiquity. Approximately in 2-1 millenium B.C . protoslavic language separated from dialects of Indo-European language family. 

In 1-st century slavic territory extended. 3 closely related groups were formed: east (an old russian nationality), western (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, coast-dwellers) and southern (its representatives – Bulgarian, Serbians, Croats, Slovenes, macedonians). 

East Slavic (old russian) language has existed since 7 till 14 century. In 10th century Cyrillic character evolved from old Russian language and reached high blossoming («Ostromirovo gospel», (11 century); «the Word about the law and the grace» by Kiev metropolitan Illarion, 11 century; «Povest` vremennyh let», the beginnings 12 century; «Slovo o polku Igoreve», 12 century; «Russkaya pravda», 11-12 centuries). 

The feudal fragmentation, the mongolo-tatar yoke (13-15 centuries), the Polish-Lithuanian conquests have resulted in disintegration of an old Russian nationality and, as a result, promoted the rise of dialects. The unity of old Russian language broken up. 3 centers of the new ethnolanguage associations struggling for the slavic originality were formed: northeast (Great Russian), southern (Ukrainians) and western (Belarusians). 

In 14-15 centuries on the basis of these associations develop closely related, but independent slavic languages: Russian, Ukrainian and Belarus. 

Russian language of the epoch of Moscow principality (14-17 centuries) had complex history. Dialect features continued to develop. 

Moscow dialect began to play the leading role. Originally it was compound, then has developed in harmonous system. It had peculiarities: akan`e; strong reduction of vowel not struck syllables, etc. 

The Moscow dialect gradually becomes model and a basis of Russian literary language. 

Book slavic language, by origin Old Bulgarian, later influenced by Russian language, basically served needs of religion and rudiments of scientific knowledge. 

In 17th century bases of russian nation are layed down. In 1708 there was a division of the civil and church slavic alphabet. In 18 and the beginning of 19 centuries was widely spread secular written language, the church literature was removed on a background. 

Scientific, technical, military, administrative and other terminology roughly developed. That caused the big inflow to russian language of words and expressions from the West-European languages. From 18 century on Russian lexicon and phraseology were influenced by French language. 

Collision of different language elements and need for general literary Russian language put a problem of creation of unified national language norms. The decision was found in sharp struggle of different currents. Democrats aspired to make literary Russian language closer to popular speech, the reactionary clergy tried to keep cleanliness of archaic «Slovene» language, obscure to wide layers of the population.