Name used by its speakers (Endonym): Russkiy (Русский)
Native speakers (estimated): 148 million
Total speakers, including second-language (estimated): 255 million
Where it’s spoken: In addition to being Russia’s national language, Russian was previously official throughout the former Soviet Union, and as a result it remains in use (officially or unofficially) in many of the ex-Soviet republics. In Belarus it shares equal status with Belarusian, and this is the only nation (besides Russia) in which a majority of the population report Russian as their primary home language. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan Russian is official but secondary to the national language of each country.
In several other countries Russian is recognized as a minority language. The majority of Ukrainians can speak Russian, including a third of the population who are native speakers, though public and government support for the language has dropped since Russia’s invasion in 2022. Russian is also recognized as a minority language in Armenia, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, and Poland.
In other nations, Russian is widely spoken but holds no official status. In the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) there are substantial numbers of ethnic Russians, but the language is rapidly being replaced by English as a lingua franca, especially among younger generations. Latvian voters in 2012 overwhelmingly rejected the adoption of Russian as a second constitutional language. Outside the former Soviet Union, the next highest Russian-speaking populations are found in Germany (2-3 million), Israel (over 1 million), and the United States (900,000); in Israel Russian is the third most spoken native language after Hebrew and Arabic.
Despite the historical Russian possession of Alaska in the 19th century, most Russian-Americans are descended from later immigrants and live elsewhere in the country, especially the New York City metropolitan area. They make up the second-largest population of Slavic heritage (after Polish-Americans), though as with other immigrant groups there is a tendency to lose Russian in favor of English over time. In Canada, the largest Russian-Canadian community is found in Toronto (unsurprisingly), though the western provinces are higher by percentage of the population.
Language family: Indo-European, Slavic (or Balto-Slavic) branch. It is the most widely spoken Slavic language.
Related languages include: Ukrainian and Belarusian have the highest degree of mutual intelligibility with Russian, together constituting the East Slavic group. The South Slavic languages (including Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian) and the West Slavic languages (including Czech and Polish) have variable degrees of similarity in vocabulary, grammar, and literary style to Russian, influenced by centuries of mutual interaction between European cultures.