The cultural-linguistic group of the Jewish people, which is known in modern Israel in the day-to-day communication practice as “Rusim” (“Russians”) and called “Russian-speaking Jews” in academic discourse, started the process of its construction began to form less than 200 years ago. At the beginning of the 19th century, few Jews of the Russian Empire had the literal Russian language, and it was not a native language for almost any of them. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, the overwhelming majority of the Jews of the Russian Empire had Yiddish as a native language, though during the last century, the level of literacy in Russian has dramatically increased among them. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, the situation is fundamentally different. The language transition has been completed.

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