There some important facts about Russian that you should know if you want to start studying this language. For example: Russia is the largest country in the world with an extremely continental weather. Russian is its official language and it is written with the Cyrillic alphabet which contains 33 letters.
On the other hand, the first Russian printed text was Azbuka which dates from 1574 B.C. Finally, this east Slavic language belongs to the Indo-European language family and nowadays is an official UN language.
Russian language history has its beginnings in 1000 A.C. These are the five important periods of Russian language history: Keivan period and feudal breakup, Tatar yoke and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Moscovite period, the Empire and Soviet period and beyond.
Statistics show that the majority of people in former Russia spoke Russian as their first and only language. Back then, during the years of the Soviet Union there was more than only one language, and these languages were spoken by people of other countries that were annexed to the USSR.
The Russian flag also known as the National Flag of Russia or the Imperial Flag of Russia can be described by three horizontal strips that lay on top of one another in the following order white, blue and red. The flag was chosen as the official flag on May 7th 1883.