History
RSL is thought to have started ca. 1806, when a school for the deaf was opened at Pavlovsk near St. Petersburg. It was exported to Bulgaria in 1920, where it has become a separate language (Bulgarian Sign Language) rather than as a dialect of Russian Sign Language, though Russian Sign Language is also used there.
The Moscow Bilingual School for the Deaf, which uses Russian Sign Language in classrooms, was opened in 1992.
Much of the early research on Russian Sign Language was done by Galina Lazarevna Zaitseva, who wrote her 1969 PhD thesis on spatial relationships in Russian Sign Language, and in 1992 devised the now standard term for Russian Sign Language "Russkii Zhestovyi Yazyk" (Russian: Русский Жестовый Язык). Ongoing research into the language takes place at the Centre for Deaf Studies in Moscow.
Read more about this topic: Russian Sign Language
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