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,
Reduplication in Russian words originated in the reduplicated babbling of infants. Word reduplications are mostly the feature of the colloquial language and in most cases do not constitute separate dictionary entries. Word reduplication may occur in the following forms: A peculiarity of Russian language is synonymic affixal reduplication, whereby a root may acquire two productive suffixes or prefixes, different, but of the same semantics, with the corresponding intensification of the meaning: Reduplication in Russian Reduplication in Russian is used to intensify meaning in different ways. Reduplication is also observable in borrowed words, such as "" (; ping-pong) and "" (; zig-zag), but since