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Russification refers to both official and unofficial policies of Imperial Russia and Soviet Union with respect to their national constituents and to national minorities in Russia proper aimed at Russian domination. In a narrow sense, Russification is used to denote influence of the Russian language on other Slavic languages.

The two main areas of Russification are politics and culture. Some consider shifts in demographics in favour of Russian population to be a form of Russification as well. In politics, an element of Russification is assigning Russian nationals to leading administrative positions in national institutions. In culture, Russification primarily amounts to domination of the Russian language in official business and strong influence of Russian language on the national ones.

One of the examples of Russification was replacement of the Polish language by Russian in areas of Poland-Lithuania after the Partitions of Poland. In particular, after the January Uprising of 1863Events January-March January 1 Abraham Lincoln delivers the Emancipation Proclamation during the second year of the American Civil War. January 1 The first claim under the Homestead Act is made for a farm in Nebraska January 8 Ground is broken in Sacramen, in 1864Events January March January 21 Maori Wars: The Tauranga Campaign starts. February 27 American Civil War: The first Northern prisoners arrive at the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia. March 1- Alejandro Mon Menendez takes office as Prime Minist Polish was banned in public places; in the 1880sEvents and Trends About 300 000 Swedes emigrate to the United States. First Boer War First commercial production and sales of phonographs and phonograph recordings. First steel frame construction "sky-scrapers" The New Imperialism Science and technology J Polish was banned in schools and offices of the Congress Kingdom. A similar development was in LithuaniaThe Republic of Lithuania ( Lithuanian Lietuva Polish Litwa, German Litauen, French Lituanie, Spanish Lituania, Estonian Lituania, Finnish Liettua) is a republic in Northeastern Europe. One of the three Baltic States along the Baltic Sea, it shares border: its Governor General Mikhail MuravyovMikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov may refer to the following historical persons of the Imperial Russia. Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov Count ( 1845- 1900), Russian diplomat and statesman, known for his activities in the Russian Far East. Mikhail Nikolayevich M instituted a complete ban on the Latin alphabetThe Latin alphabet also called the Roman alphabet is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world, the standard script of the English language and most of the languages of western and central Europe, and of those areas settled by Europeans. and LithuanianLithuanian is the official language of Lithuania, spoken by about 4 million native Lithuanians. The Lithuanian name for the language is Lietuviu kalba''. In older literature on Baltic languages, "Lithuanian" can sometimes refer to Baltic Languages in gene printed matter. The ban was lifted only in 1904. Still another example is Ems Ukaz of 1876, banning the Ukrainian language.

As a result of this policy, quite a few national languages, such as Tatar and Belarusian, were perceived by many as rural or uneducated, if not useless for study at school.

After the 1917 revolution, the intellectuals of several Central Asian countries and Tatarstan established new standards for the local language. In many cases they substituted the Arabic alphabet with adapted versions of the Latin alphabet, usually inspired by the Turkish alphabet. During the rule of Stalin, these alphabets were replaced by adaptations of the Cyrillic alphabet. This also happened when Moldova was taken from Romania after the Second World War. The Moldovan language restored the Cyrillic alphabet abandoned by Romanians in the 19th century. Several of these countries have changed to a Latin alphabet since the break up of the Soviet Union.

In the Soviet Union, publications in technical and scientific journals, with rare exceptions, were in Russian. This led to underdevelopment of modern technical and scientific terminology in national languages, further degrading their status. While in almost all Soviet republics bilingualism was official, it was "asymmetric": the titular nation learned Russian, whereas immigrated Russians generally did not learn the local language.

One of the forms of Russification is using an official script ( Cyrillic) in Russia, even some languages ( Tatar, Karelian) was used Latin before this law was accepted by Duma.