Russian Culture Dates Back to Antiquity

Russia has a rich culture that dates back to antiquity. The Russian people are extremely proud of their race and culture. They adore many of their poems and songs that eulogise the virtues of their motherland.

Being a vast country with a wide range of ethnic groups living within its borders, Russia has a rich culture that dates back to antiquity. The Russian society is family-centric in nature where all the members of the family play a vital role in the family’s welfare. Since two or three generations of family members share an apartment or home in most families, there is a lot of interaction between the very young and the very old. Most modern families however try to have just one child per family as the women also have to work in order to support the family. Therefore, they prefer to raise just one child.

The Russian people are extremely proud of their race and culture. They adore many of their poems and songs that eulogise the virtues of their motherland. Most of the people have undergone severe hardships during the development of the nation as a whole. Therefore, they take great pride in having played a vital part in making Russia what it is today. They also have a deep love for their culture and traditions, which they guard very passionately. Although they belong to a wide variety of separate ethnic groups, they still join together as one when it comes to a national identity.

There are 160 different ethnic groups in Russia and they speak about a hundred different languages. According to a census made almost a decade earlier, almost 150 million people spoke Russian. It was followed by Tatar, which was spoken by about 5 million people. Ukrainian came third with almost 2 million speakers. While the official state language is Russian, the individual republics are given the right to have their own native language co-official with Russian. This makes Russian the most widespread language in Eurasia in terms of geography. It is also the most widely spoken language among the Slavic languages. Apart from Ukrainian, Belarusian and probably Rusyn, Russian is one of the surviving members that belong to the East Slavic languages. Russian has its roots in the Indo-European language family.

The ancient Slavs were pagan worshipers and most of the old Russian folklore reflect these beliefs. Slavic mythology is also adopted into epic Russian bylinas. Many of these were also made into animated films or even feature length movies with famous directors directing these movies. Examples are movies like Morozko, Vasilisa the Beautiful directed by Aleksandr Rou and Ilya Muromets, Sadko directed by Aleksandr Ptushko. Russian literature also has adapted many of these fairy tales into its repertoire. Many classical Russian fairy tales have been turned into exquisite poems by eminent Russian poets like Leonid Filatov and Pyotr Yershov. Even the great Alexander Pushkin wrote a number of fairy tale poems that became extremely popular.

Folk music plays a large part in Russian culture. There are specific Russian musical instruments that are used in the rendering of these folk tunes. Some of the folk music instruments include balalaika contrabass, garmoshka, gusli, zhaleika, balalaika, bayan accordion and Gypsy guitar. Many f the classical composers of Russia had been greatly influenced by folk music. Even contemporary popular Russian folk bands like Melnitsa have been inspired the folk music of their land. Even the Red Army choir and many other Russian ensembles use Russian folk songs and national patriotic songs that belong to the Soviet era in their repertoire. Ethnic Russian dances like chechotka, kamarinskaya, khorovod, barynya and kazachok when danced with the folk music of Russia are a treat to watch.

In order to relish the beauty of the Russian folklore and the depth of their literature, you really need to understand their language at least to a certain extent. It is not very difficult to learn Russian. With a moderate amount of effort, you can easily learn Russian free online. Of course, people do feel that Russian is a difficult language to learn. But any language for that matter is indeed difficult to learn in the beginning. But once the initial strangeness of the language is gotten over, it becomes fairly easy to understand the nuances of the language. It is the very same way when it comes to learning Russian. At first, it might be a little strange when you begin. The sounds of the Russian words and sentences might be a little odd. The written script of the language might also look a little queer. But with some consistent effort, you can easily learn Russian free using many online resources.