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1000
Emergence of the Russian Language
Roughly, around 1000 AD the Russian language began to be spoken and written by eastern Slavic peoples, primarily in the kingdom of Kievan Rus. The Slavic peoples adopted Christianity in 988 AD and soon after Russian, or as it was more commonly known then, Old Church Slavonic, became the language used in liturgies. Religion is the main factor into the distinction between the Cyrillic alphabet and the Latin alphabet. -
Period: 1000 to
History of Russian Language
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Reforms of Peter the Great
From around 1700 onward, Peter the Great, one of Russia's most well-known Tsars, carried out reforms to the language, which sought to modernize Russian. The alphabet was slightly reformed and plenty of new vocabulary was introduced from other Western European languages, primarily French and German. -
Language Reforms of 1918
The newly formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dramatically reformed the language into the Russian that exists today. Many changes in spelling were adopted and previously all words in Russian ended in either a hard or soft sign. However, this was done away and if you compare old Russian to the newly reformed language they are quite different.