Russian, aka "Slovenian" language, was spoken over a vast territory from the Adriatic to the Urals and from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean.
Any revolution is always a disaster for those whose world it destroys. (In this context, the revolution should be understood in a broad sense - as a set of events that dramatically change the state of society.) But at the same time, it is also an anastrophe, that is, the opportunity to realize their ambitions for those who previously could not even have thought about it ("Was nothing, but became everything"). Revolutions are always associated with a change in the foundations of the consciousness of the bulk of people (although in theory it is quite enough for 1/6 of the population to accept innovations). And the foundations of consciousness (mentality) are directly related to language, for language is a category of a higher order than biology-physiology.
King Henry VIII of England.
Several examples from history. It is believed that Henry VIII in England in the first half of the XVI century. forcibly introduced the obligatory "correct" English language, while those who did not master it lost all rights, including property rights (very similar to the current situation in the Baltic States). And this despite the fact that for a long time the official language in England was … French. And the French have Latin! There is information that the “home” language of the first Romanovs was Polish. Under Peter I, the language of those close to him became Dutch (and not at all German, as that dialect is usually called!). Later in Russia, the language of the "upper classes" became French, and in the family of Nicholas II, English was spoken at home, anticipating the current dominance of "American English".
Moldavian prince Roman I.
The main European national languages (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish), according to the official version, were mainly formed in the XVI-XVII centuries. The fate of the Russian language is completely different! Karamzin called the Russian language of the 15th century. "Slovenian" (from the name of the northern group of Eastern Slavs - "Slovene"), which was spoken over a vast territory - from the Adriatic to the Urals and from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. The letters of the Moldavian prince Roman in the XIV century were written in Russian, which is quite understandable without any translation. and letters of the Turkish Sultan Murad in the 15th century, documents of the office of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 14th-16th centuries. It is noteworthy that there this language bore an amazing name - "Simply"! That is, it was understandable to almost everyone, and was not ecclesiastical, but civil. In Lithuania it is still called "Russian" (I mean not the modern Russian language, but the one that was used in Europe in the Middle Ages), and our linguists call it "Old Belarusian". It is believed that in the 16th century and up to 1697, poetry was written no worse than Italian, and in Cyrillic.
Ottoman Sultan Murad II.
But … in Muscovy of the Romanovs, these books were banned: for the entire 17th century. only 6 (!) non-church books have been published. The Old Believers were literate almost without exception, and the Nikonian reforms led to the fact that in just 40 years the majority of the population turned into ignoramuses. Peter I, abolishing the patriarchate and subjugating the church, introduced the civil alphabet and began to revive literacy. His work was later continued by Lomonosov, Dashkova and others. However, the classical Russian language took shape only in the first half of the 19th century. through the efforts of Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Boratynsky, Gogol, Lermontov and a whole galaxy of writers of that "golden" age. The main achievement of these ascetics is the creation of a single Russian language, understandable to all classes.
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By the way, "estate" is a purely Russian concept, it denotes a community of people who have their own language, argos, who understand each other "by word." And this argo, despite the specifics of terms and meanings, is within the limits of the public language. And, for example, in Greece and Norway there are still two languages - "book" and "common". The revolution in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century was objectively inevitable, but it happened with very serious catastrophic consequences, including for the Russian language. As a "revolutionary" argo, a lexicon of truncated combined ugly words arose like "kombed", "brigade commander", "people's commissar", "Comintern".
Gestapo poster from the Second World War.
In the first case, the component "com" - from the word "committee", in the second - from "commander", in the third - from "commissar", in the fourth - from "communist". We find echoes of this phenomenon in the current words "food store", "supermarket", "special forces", etc. A similar phenomenon was in Germany: for example, "Gestapo" is an abbreviation of the German Geheime Staatspolizei ("secret state police").
The October Revolution also required spelling reform. Carried out in 1918, it "cut off" from itself a significant part of the Russian intelligentsia, which did not accept either it or the revolutionary newspeak.
But language as a system of a high degree of organization and internal protection is very tenacious. This fully applies to the Russian language. Evidence? You are welcome. "Telegraphic" Russian language allows you to reduce up to 50% of the words of the original message without losing meaning. This is a direct evidence of at least two-fold redundancy-reliability inherent in the language. The language will absorb what is viable, digest and throw out the excess "carrion".
Nature abhors a vacuum. Both the dialectal simple word "sucker", meaning salmon emaciated after spawning, which can be picked up with bare hands, and the Pskov-Tver "sucker" - "fool" were fully manifested practically in their sense in the 1990s, the years of another revolution.
So do not be afraid of borrowed words such as "ICQ" or "flash drive": Russian was digested and not that. Digestibility indicator - Russian suffixes, endings, declension.
As long as the Russian language is alive, Russia is alive. And not only that: many different ethnic groups can communicate with each other exclusively in Russian. Therefore, the question of the Russian language is a political one, both inside Russia and outside it. Several years ago, a campaign was launched for the reform of the Russian language, which, thank God, was stopped. Russia needs not a reform of the Russian language, but a reform of the teaching of the Russian language - from top to bottom.
