III.

History

Writing began at the end of the 10th century after the conversion of the Slavic peoples in the area to Christianity. The written language introduced by the missionaries was Old Church Slavonic, also called Old Bulgarian or Old Slavonic. At the time of its introduction, Old Church Slavonic was readily understood by Eastern Slavs. Gradually, however, the difference between the written and the spoken language increased, the spoken language undergoing a number of simplifications in both its phonemic (sound) and morphological (word-forming) structure.

Old Church Slavonic continued to be used as the literary language until the end of the 17th century, and only in administrative and legal matters was writing completely free from Old Church Slavonic influences.

In the 18th century the secularization of culture that occurred during the reign of the Russian emperor Peter the Great caused a great upheaval in language. The old written language, whether the essentially ecclesiastical Old Church Slavonic or the administrative language, was unable to encompass the many scientific, technological, cultural, and political concepts that Peter introduced, and a written language developed that was actually a mixture of styles, including the archaic Old Church Slavonic, the vernacular, and the recently borrowed Western elements. A new norm developed that reached its present state in the first half of the 19th century.