ABSTRACT
Russian tradition Russian is part of the East Slavonic family of languages and one of the six official languages of the United Nations. The history of modern Russia dates back to the ninth century AD, when a number of East Slavonic tribes united to form a new state known as Kievan Rus, after the name of its capital. Later the country's political centre moved to Moscow, which became the capital of a united Russia under Ivan the Great in the fifteenth century. Contact with Western Europe was initiated in the seventeenth century by Peter the Great, who established the educational system and built a new capital , St Petersburg (later to become known as Leningrad). Political unrest under the tsars culminated in a period of civil war ( 19 1 8-22), after which the Communists established control of the country. The end of World War Two saw the rise of the Soviet Union as one of the two major world powers. The mid-1980s saw the beginning of a period of social and political reform, known in the West as perestroika, and the progressive disen gagement of Russia from Eastern Europe.
