234 years ago: The Imperial Russian Academy was established

On Oct. 11, 1783 Russian Empress Catherine the Great ordered the establishment of the Russian Academy. It was the research center of the Russian language and literature. The first head of the Russian Academy was Princess Yekaterina Dashkova, who organized public lectures, issued literary magazines, and the first Russian explanatory dictionary (1789-1794). The first edition of the dictionary contained 43,257 words.

Dashkova also suggested the use of the letter “ё” (1783) instead of the old digraph “io.”

In 1841, the Imperial Russian Academy became a part of the St. Petersburg’s Academy of Science (the predecessor of today’s Russian Academy of Science).

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