Bolshoi Ballet of censorship. It was the first time a show has been pulled in such a way since the collapse of the Soviet Union, sparking rumours about the motivation behind it. Today the Bolshoi Ballet remains one of the world's foremost ballet companies, in addition to being one of the largest, with approximately 220 dancers. The word "bolshoi" means "big" or "grand" in Russian. The company operates on a hierarchical system, similar to those used by other leading European ballet companies, with senior dancers ranked as principals, and descending in order of importance through lead soloist, first soloist, soloist and finally,
Nadsat influences play the biggest role in Nadsat. Most of those Russian-influenced words are slightly anglicized loan-words, often maintaining the original Russian pronunciation. One example is the Russian word "Lyudi", which is anglicized to "lewdies", meaning "people". Another Russian word is "Bábushka" which is anglicized to "baboochka", meaning "grandmother", "old woman". Some of the anglicised words are truncated, for example "pony" from "ponimát’", "to understand", or otherwise shortened, for example "veck" from "čelovék", "person", "man" (though the anglicized word "chelloveck" is also used in the book). A further means of constructing Nadsat words is the employment of homophones (known as folk