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,
Russian jokes the Chinese are capable of amazing feats by primitive means, such as the Great Leap Forward. A good many of the jokes are puns based on the fact that a widespread Chinese syllable (written as "hui" in pinyin) looks very similar to the obscene Russian word for penis. For this reason, since about 1956 the Russian-Chinese dictionaries render the Russian transcription of this syllable as "хуэй" ("huey") (which actually is closer to the correct Standard Chinese pronunciation). The most embarrassing case for the Chinese-Soviet friendship probably is the word "socialism" (社会主义; pinyin: "shè huì zhǔ yì"), rendered previously as шэ-хуй-чжу-и.