русский и/или российский?

[kasak.livejournal.com]

There's a question I've had for a long while, but haven't asked it. What is the difference between русский and российский? Any help would be appreciated.

Comments

[spokojnik.livejournal.com]

well, nobody knows forsure, although i might guess, that русский is something more like national. it's not necessarily "from Russian Federation". On the other hand the word российский is an analog to the word советский from the soviet times, which underlines object's belonging to Russia as a state.
And surely you cannot use российский in a relation to a human being.
for ex.
У тебя российский паспорт. Но это не значит что ты - русский.

[spokojnik.livejournal.com]

to a person the word российский can be related only as российский гражданин. it means that he maybe doesn't speak any russain at all, but he is an official citizen of Russia.

[mooze.livejournal.com]

it's pretty simple. русский stands for anyone speaking Russian language specifically or refers to something that has cultural connotations to Russian culture. российский stands for something that has to do with Russian Federation. it's kinda difficult and elusive, but here are some examples:
российский флаг - флаг Российской Федерации
русский язык - язык, на котором разговаривают русские
россияне - граждане России
русские - могу быть гражданами Украины, имеют русские корни, говорят на русском языке

Russian flag - Russian Federation's flag
Russian language - language spoken by the Russians
Russians as citizens of Russia
Russians - could be citizens of Ukraine, but have Russian roots and speak Russian language.

in short, русский is an attribute or a quality that has to do with Russian ethnicity, российский - an attribute or a quality that has to do with Russian country/state. It's really hard to give a very specific definition to a very broad concept, but I tried. Have any more questions, let me know///

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Российский means "from Russia". Русский means "ethnic Russian". Russia is a federation of several dozen nations. Russians are the majority (about 80 per cent,) but not the sole nation in the country. When we describe any citizen of Russian Federation, be they Russians, Tatars, Bashkirs, Udmurts, Yakuts, etc. etc. etc., we use the word россиянин (s) / россияне (the later being Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin's, favorite word to address the nation, while Vladimir Putin prefers граждане России - citizens of Russia.)
To make things worse, there are Russians in other countries (several million people); they are русские but not россияне.

As for the words you were asking about, you could say "русский язык" (Russian language), but cannot say "российский язык" - it's a nonsense.

[beowabbit]

Might you say "российские языки" to mean "languages spoken in Russia?"

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I'd say "языки России" or, even better, "языки народов России".

[nbuwe.livejournal.com]

BTW, similar distinction exists for латышский/латвийский.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Right.

[dr-s.livejournal.com]

Also: немецкий/германский, финский/финляндский, еврейский/израильский. Are there other examples of this kind?

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

Sure. Сербский, хорватский, словенский etc. / югославский. Индусский (related to the followers of Hinduism)/ индийский (Indian, India's.) Голландский (Dutch, espec. language) / нидерландский (Nederlandish) etc.

[nick-nsk.livejournal.com]

русский - nationality
российский - citizenship

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

OK, what about the costructions like "Русская Америка" (Alaska) or "российский сахар" (Russian sugar)?

[shellesie.livejournal.com]

could you please tell me what is it - "russian sugar"?? Is it something specific??

[-kk.livejournal.com]

Depends on what you mean :)
российский сахар is imported from Russia;
русский сахар would be a special sugar recipe or kind of sugar, but as far as I know there is no such thing.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

российский сахар is any sugar produced in Russia :) But there is no русский сахар because sugar has no ethnicity :)) But there is русская кухня - Russian cuisine - because food, being a part of human culture, varies from people to people as much as from state to state :)

[evaluna68.livejournal.com]

Except that in English, "nationality" and "citizenship" are the same thing, while in Russian, the analogous words are used to refer to ethnicity and citizenship, respectively.

Trust me on this - I worked in Immigration Court in the U.S. in the early 1990s, while the East Bloc was fragmenting into smithereens. The application forms for politicla asylum used the two words interchangeably, and it caused no end of confusion, especially for English-only speakers who had no idea that something like "Tatar" could be a nationality, or that someone who carried an Estonian passport would refer to his "nationality" as Russian. And don't even start me on the Macedonians or the Albanians.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

This is only because Eastern European countries consist of many ancient nations with their strong feeling of national identity - which doesn't change much as their nation drifts from the jurisdiction of one state to another. Think about Polish people: they didn't have their own state for two hundred years, their home land being divided between Austria, Russia, Germany etc., but is there now a nation with a stronger feeling of national (=ethnic) identity?

[evaluna68.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know, and that's a topic for a long discussion, especially with a nice Jewish girl whose great-grandparents are from cities which are now in Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. :-) And probably a few others. But some of the towns now in Poland were then "Austria," and some of the ones now in Ukraine were then in Poland, etc.

Thankfully, they have since revised the asylum application form. Link:

http://uscis.gov/graphics/formsfee/forms/i-589.htm (link to .pdf form toward the bottom of the page)

The form itself doesn't start until p. 14; the preceding stuff is all instructions. Gotta love the Agency Formerly Known as INS.

[alexander-p.livejournal.com]

When we say pоссийский, we have in mind the nationality of the subject. Российский means that the subject somehow belongs to the Russian nation.
(We don't use this word when speaking about something connected with the Russian Empire.)

Русский, when used in regard to a man, means generally ethnic origin. But the difficulty here is that now the word русский indicates belonging to the Russian culture rather than to Russian ethnic group, i.e. not only real ethnic Russians but also any people (whose blood is not pure Russian) living in the area of the Russian culture (especially if they are memebers of Russian Orthodox Church) can consider themselves Russians.

Accordingly, when русский is used with inanimate objects, it means that we acknowledge them belonging to the Russian culture, and we emphasize that fact. When we speak about something of nowadays, we couldn't be always sure that this or that phenomena reside in our traditional culture, and in this case we could also use the word российский.

For instance, you can compare "русская литература" и "российская литература". The former is literature in traditions of our classics, the latter is works of modern Russian writers.

[nbuwe.livejournal.com]

When we say pоссийский [...] (We don't use this word when speaking about something connected with the Russian Empire.)

А как же Самодержец Российский? :)

[alexander-p.livejournal.com]

А как же тогда, собственно, Российская Империя? :-)

Thanks for your remark. Surely, российский is used for official names of the Russian Empire. But the when we simply speak about phenomena of life in the Russian Empire, we use the word русский: русская армия, русские писатели, русские цари и т.д.

[simonff.livejournal.com]

I would say that российский is a rediscovered word. When I was growing up during late Soviet times, it was an archaic word, only found in old books and never used. Русский was used in various matter-of-fact topics, as well as to describe our nationality in common speach. Cоветский was too pompous, so no-one outside of official contexts thought of ourselves as советские люди - everybody consider themselves русские (having limited experience with other ethnic groups at that time, I can't vouch if it was true everywhere, but certainly in main Russian-speaking regions).

Then советский became a historical term, and using русский to replace it in official settings felt weird - it was too commonplace, too folksy a word for the occasion. Very suddenly, российский and россиянин were dug up to fill the niche.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I would tend to agree, though, having a quite unlimited experience with other ethnic groups during the late Soviet time (especially in the army,) I would doubt the universal meaning of the word русский at that time. Maybe except the context of that 1970s joke:
"Мать армянка, отец эстонец... кто сын будет? - Как кто - русский!!
(The mother is Armenian, the father is Estonian... I wonder who'd be their son? - Russian, of course!)

[evaluna68.livejournal.com]

And not just a 1970s joke, either. There's a fair amount of sociological literature on that phenomenon. A decent place to start might be Rasma Karklins, Ethnic Relations in the USSR: The Perspective from Below. Or maybe Gerhard Simon, Nationalism and Policy Toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union: From Totalitarian Dictatorship to Post-Stalinist Society (which is somewhat more recent).

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

I said "the context of a joke," not "the joke itself" :)))

P.S.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

BTW many Tatars I knew back in the 1980s (during my milittary service) would almost never refer to Russians (русские) as such; when speaking between themselves, they would call us кяфирлер (infidels, non-Muslims,) though they were modern guys, not Muslim at all.

Re: P.S.

[simonff.livejournal.com]

Is it still true for modern Tatars?

Re: P.S.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

After I've divorced my 2nd wife who was Tatar (which happened five years ago,) I have no longer seen many Tatars. In her family, though, when her relatives of previous generation (she herself could not speak Tatar though she'd understand their speech) didn't want me to understand, they would switch to Tatar from time to time, and I would hear that word again, though they would say сэйли русча (speak Russian!) to each other when they'd notice that I was paying too much attention :))