Eastern And Western Russia

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Russia is the world’s largest country by land area, and it ranks sixth in terms of the most densely populated countries. Russia occupies much of Eastern Europe and all of Northern Asia. Because of the fact that Russia is divided by its location within these two continents accounts for the diverse cultural aspects found within the country. This also accounts for the split between East and West, between traditional Russian values and Western influence. These differences may be seen in many ways, some of which include: Russian language, literature, art and architecture, music, and politics.
The development of the Russian language is not easily traced historically because until the 17th century, the religious and cultural language of the Russian people was not Russian, but Church Slavonic. When Peter the Great undertook the task to Westernize Russia in the early 18th century, the Russian language was subjected to Western influences and absorbed a number of foreign words. Peter was the first to reform and simplify the Cyrillic alphabet used for Russian. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries., partly as a result of the work of the great Russian writer Aleksandr Pushkin, the Russians succeeded in throwing off the dominance of Church Slavonic and in developing their own tongue into a literary language, which was, nevertheless, influenced and even enriched by the Church Slavonic legacy. Literary Russian is based on the dialect used in and around the city of Moscow, which became the leading cultural center of the country in the 15th century. Extensive reforms, aimed at simplifying and standardizing Russian writing and grammar, took place after the Revolution of 1917.
Western influence manifested itself though a number of translations and also through the establishment of the first theater in Russia. The Westernizing process was greatly accelerated under the rule of Peter I, and at the same time the Russian alphabet was revised...