In St. Petersburg at the turn of the 20th century, this scale had become so familiar in the circle of composers around Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov that it was referred to as the "Korsakovian scale" (Корсаковская гамма) . As early as 1911, the Russian theorist Boleslav Yavorsky described this collection of pitches as the "diminished mode" (уменьшённый лад), because of the stable way the diminished fifth functions in it . In more recent Russian theory, the term "octatonic" is not used. Instead, this scale is placed among other symmetrical modes (total 11) under its historical name "Rimsky-Korsakov scale", or "Rimsky-Korsakov mode" (; ).