Eastern Europe is a unique region in terms of language. Slavic languages are very similar in a number of ways – the alphabet, grammar and vocabulary are close to identical when comparing, for example, Ukrainian, Russian and Belarus languages. Borders separating the Slavic world are not exactly boundaries as Serbs easily understand Ukrainians, Ukrainians understand Poles and Poles find it easy to speak with Czech people. Russian is mostly heard in Russia but traces of its influence can be found all over former USSR countries, Eastern and Central Europe and even Cuba. Nevertheless, the majority of Russian-speaking people live in the European part of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. This territory stretches from Baltic Sea to Ural Mountains and from Caucasus to the White Sea. There are also other areas with big amounts of Russian speaking populations, like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan or Israel, but they are somewhat distant from the main domain. .
Through the course of its history, Russia was a crucible where many nations and languages mixed to create a lively, complex, flexible and vibrant language. This also means that not only roots of Slavic languages are found in Russian; the influences of French, Finno-Ugric and Ural languages are very strong. Numerous smaller languages of the nations that were consumed are represented in Russian in a less apparent manner. To start with the comparison of Russian with the other languages of the Slavic family it might be interesting to list one fact that I have learned from a native Russian. It states that it is much easier for other Slavs to understand Russian than vice versa. Russian's closest relatives, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Rusyn, are very similar in the number of ways. All of them have a relatively large consonant inventory (over 20), moderate vowel inventory (below 10), have no definite or indefinite articles, very close or same number of cases (6-7) and the same word order.
