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Russian language proverbs are words of wisdom created in Slavic languages by Slavic peoples. The proverbs originated from oral history and ancient written texts dating as far back as the 12th century. The Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs (пословица [pɐˈslovʲɪtsə]) and sayings (поговорка [pəɡɐˈvorkə]). The proverbs express a universal concept, have a moral lesson and provide an insight into many aspects of history, culture, and national character of the people who created them. By the 17th century, the proverbs were collected and documented. They were studied in the 19th and 20th centuries. Vladimir Dal was a famous lexicographer of the Russian Empire whose collection was published in Russian language in the late 19th century as The Sayings and Bywords of the Russian People, featuring more than 30,000 entries. They continue to endure in modern literature and folklore. Evidence of this is seen in the collection of Russian anti-proverbs collected by Reznikov.
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Origin of Russian language proverbs
Russian became a full-fledged literary language in the 18th century in Eastern Europe, when it finally displaced Church Slavonic language. Russian language proverbs were first collected and documented during the Russian Empire from the oral history of many different cultures and nationalities.
The Russian Empire included parts of:
Russia
Poland
Finland
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Belarus
Moldova
Ukraine
Georgia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Kazakhstan
Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Under the unification of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1991, Russian language continued to be the official and dominant language, displacing the languages of the fifteen Republics of the Soviet Union. Today, the Commonwealth of Independent States continues to use Russian language as their working language.