In brief: "Rissian" is how many people type Russian, so this is a guide to real Russian culture: the people, their big holidays (New Year, Maslenitsa, Easter, Victory Day), the food and drink, Orthodox faith, literature, music, crafts and the famous welcome with bread and salt.
People who search for "Rissian culture" or "Rissian people" are almost always looking for Russian culture — the i-for-u swap is one of the most common typos on the web (we explain it in what Rissian means). Below is an honest, practical overview of how Russians live, celebrate and eat, with links to our more detailed guides.
Who Are the Russian People?
Russians (русские, RUS-ski-ye) are an East Slavic people. Their history traces back to Kievan Rus', a medieval state centred on Kyiv from the late 9th century, which is also the shared ancestor of Ukrainians and Belarusians. After the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, the principality of Moscow gradually rose to power, and Ivan IV ("the Terrible") was crowned the first Tsar of Russia in 1547. Peter the Great proclaimed the Russian Empire in 1721 and moved the capital to his new city, St Petersburg. After the revolutions of 1917 came the Soviet Union, which lasted until 1991, when today's Russian Federation emerged.
Russia is the largest country in the world by area, stretching across eleven time zones from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific, and it is home to well over a hundred ethnic groups. Ethnic Russians are the majority, but Tatars, Bashkirs, Chechens, Chuvash, Yakuts, Buryats and many others have their own languages, religions and customs. Millions of Russian speakers also live outside Russia.
Everyday Customs and Values
Hospitality: Bread and Salt
The best-known Russian custom of welcome is хлеб-соль (khlyep-SOL, "bread-salt"). Honoured guests, newlyweds and official visitors are greeted with a round, decorated loaf (a karavai) on an embroidered towel, with a small container of salt set on top. The guest breaks off a piece, dips it in the salt and eats it. The word for hospitality itself, хлебосольство, is built from "bread" and "salt". Our post on Russian bread making covers the loaves behind the tradition.
Visiting a Russian Home
- Shoes off: guests usually take off their shoes at the door and are often offered slippers (тапочки, TA-pach-ki).
- Don't come empty-handed: bring something small — cake, chocolates, wine or flowers.
- Odd numbers of flowers: bouquets for happy occasions have an odd number of stems; even numbers are for funerals and graves.
- The threshold: many people avoid shaking hands or passing things across a doorway, a common superstition.
- Expect to eat: hosts set out plenty of food, and refusing everything can seem impolite.
- Sit before a journey: before a long trip, family members often sit down together in silence for a moment (присесть на дорожку) for luck.
Names and Politeness
Russians have a first name, a patronymic (derived from the father's first name) and a surname: Anna Sergeyevna Ivanova is Anna, daughter of Sergei. In formal settings people are addressed by first name and patronymic, with the polite pronoun вы (vy); friends and family use the informal ты (ty) and affectionate short forms such as Sasha for Aleksandr or Masha for Maria. Our language guides explain how this shapes greetings like hello in Russian and how are you.
Dacha and Banya
Many city families have a дача (DA-cha), a country cottage with a garden where summer weekends are spent growing vegetables, picking berries and mushrooms, and making preserves for winter. The баня (BA-nya), a wood-heated steam bath, is another cherished institution, often followed by a plunge into cold water or snow. You can read more in our posts on preserving food and wellness traditions.
Major Russian Holidays
New Year (Новый год) – 31 December to 1 January
New Year is the biggest family holiday of the year. Homes have a decorated fir tree (ёлка, YOL-ka), children receive presents from Дед Мороз (Ded Moroz, "Grandfather Frost") and his granddaughter Снегурочка (snye-GOO-rach-ka, the Snow Maiden), and the table is filled with dishes such as Olivier salad and "herring under a fur coat". At midnight the Kremlin clock chimes on television and everyone clinks glasses of sparkling wine and says С Новым годом! (s NO-vym GO-dam). Many of these customs moved from Christmas to New Year during the Soviet era, when religious holidays were discouraged. Public holidays usually run from 1 to 8 January.
Orthodox Christmas – 7 January
The Russian Orthodox Church follows the Julian calendar, so Christmas falls on 7 January. Believers attend a night service; the evening before (Сочельник) traditionally ends a fast and features a sweet grain dish called sochivo or kutia. Some families still mark the "Old New Year" on the night of 13–14 January, a leftover from the pre-1918 calendar.
Maslenitsa (Масленица) – late winter
Maslenitsa (MAS-lye-nit-sa), or "Butter Week", is the week before Orthodox Great Lent and a joyful farewell to winter. Its symbol is the blin: thin pancakes, round and golden like the sun, eaten with butter, sour cream, jam, honey or caviar. Towns hold fairs with sleigh rides, snowball fights and folk music, and the week ends with the burning of a straw effigy of Lady Maslenitsa. The last day is "Forgiveness Sunday", when people ask each other's forgiveness before Lent begins. See more in our post on Russian spring festivals.
Easter (Пасха)
Easter is the most important religious holiday. After a midnight service, people greet each other with Христос воскресе! (khris-TOS vas-KRYE-sye, "Christ is risen!") and reply Воистину воскресе! (va-EES-ti-nu vas-KRYE-sye, "Truly He is risen!"). Tables feature dyed eggs, the tall sweet bread кулич (koo-LEECH) and пасха, a pyramid-shaped dessert of sweetened curd cheese.
Victory Day – 9 May
Victory Day commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, ending what Russians call the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945), in which the Soviet Union lost an estimated 27 million people. It is marked with military parades, wreath-laying at war memorials, fireworks and gatherings with veterans, and many families remember relatives who fought or died in the war.
Other dates you'll hear about
- 23 February – Defender of the Fatherland Day, informally a day to congratulate men.
- 8 March – International Women's Day, a major holiday with flowers and gifts for women.
- 12 June – Russia Day, the national holiday.
- 22 August – National Flag Day (see our Russian flag guide).
- 1 September – Day of Knowledge, the first day of school, when children bring flowers for their teachers.
Weddings have their own rich set of customs, from "buying the bride" to the karavai loaf; see Russian wedding traditions.
Food and Drink
Russian cooking grew out of a cold climate and a long winter: grains, root vegetables, cabbage, mushrooms, dairy and preserved foods. Familiar dishes include borscht (beet soup, shared with Ukrainian cuisine), shchi (cabbage soup), pelmeni (meat dumplings), blini, pirozhki (small filled buns), buckwheat kasha, solyanka and the cold summer soup okroshka. Sour cream (smetana) goes on almost everything. A festive meal starts with zakuski — cold appetizers like pickles, salads, herring and cured fish. Our full guide to Russian food covers these in detail.
Tea is the everyday drink, traditionally brewed strong in a small teapot and diluted with hot water from a samovar (see our Russian tea traditions post). Kvass (a lightly fermented bread drink), kompot (fruit simmered in water), mors (berry drink) and kefir are popular non-alcoholic choices, and vodka comes with its own etiquette of toasts and snacks. Read more in Russian drinks. The White Russian cocktail, by contrast, is Belgian-American rather than Russian — see what is a White Russian.
Religion
Eastern Orthodox Christianity arrived with the baptism of Kievan Rus' under Prince Vladimir in 988 and has shaped Russian art, architecture and the calendar ever since: onion-domed churches, icons, bell-ringing and fasting seasons. Religion was suppressed during much of the Soviet period and has seen a revival since 1991. Islam is the second-largest faith, traditional among Tatars, Bashkirs and many peoples of the North Caucasus; Buddhism is practiced in Buryatia, Kalmykia and Tuva; and Judaism has deep historical roots in the country.
Literature
Many Russians can recite Pushkin by heart. Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) is regarded as the founder of modern Russian literature; he was followed by Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace, Anna Karenina), Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov) and Anton Chekhov. The 20th century brought Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Mikhail Bulgakov (The Master and Margarita), and Nobel laureates Boris Pasternak and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. See our posts on Russian poetry and Russian idioms.
Music, Ballet and Visual Arts
Russian classical music reached the world in the 19th century through Glinka, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and above all Pyotr Tchaikovsky, whose Swan Lake and The Nutcracker are ballet staples. Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich followed in the 20th. The Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and the Mariinsky in St Petersburg remain among the world's leading ballet and opera houses. Folk music, with the balalaika, the accordion-like garmon and round dances (khorovod), is covered in our Russian folk music post.
In the visual arts, the icon painter Andrei Rublev created his famous Trinity in the early 15th century; 19th-century realists such as Ilya Repin and landscape painter Isaac Levitan were followed by avant-garde pioneers Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich. Folk crafts are just as famous: nesting matryoshka dolls (first made in the 1890s), red-black-and-gold Khokhloma woodware, blue-and-white Gzhel ceramics (see Russian blue), Palekh lacquer miniatures and colourful embroidery (see embroidery in fashion).
Traditional Dress
Traditional women's dress centred on the sarafan, a long pinafore-style dress worn over a blouse, often with a kokoshnik headdress on festive occasions; men wore a belted shirt (kosovorotka) with the collar opening to the side. Today these are worn mainly by folk ensembles and at festivals, while the fur ushanka remains a practical winter hat — see our guide to Russian hats. For the century when much of this was documented, read 19th-century Russia.
Language
Russian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet (33 letters) and is commonly cited as having around 255 million speakers. It uses the formal/informal вы/ты distinction, has six grammatical cases and flexible word order. Useful first words: Здравствуйте (ZDRAST-vuy-tye, hello, polite), Привет (pree-VYET, hi), Спасибо (spa-SEE-ba, thank you). Start with our English to Russian phrase guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Rissian people the same as Russian people?
Yes. "Rissian" is a common misspelling of "Russian", so Rissian people are Russian people. There is no separate Rissian ethnic group.
What is the most important holiday in Russia?
For most families it is New Year, celebrated on the night of 31 December with a decorated tree, Ded Moroz, a big dinner and the midnight chimes of the Kremlin clock. Easter is the most important religious holiday, and Victory Day on 9 May is the most important national commemoration.
What is Maslenitsa?
Maslenitsa is "Butter Week", the week before Orthodox Great Lent, celebrated with blini pancakes, fairs and the burning of a straw effigy to say goodbye to winter.
What does bread and salt mean in Russian culture?
Offering bread and salt (khleb-sol) is the traditional Russian welcome. A guest breaks off a piece of the loaf, dips it in salt and eats it as a sign of accepting the host's hospitality.
What religion are most Russians?
Most religious Russians are Eastern Orthodox Christians. Islam, Buddhism and Judaism are also recognized as traditional religions in Russia.