How to include russian in LaTeX (LEd)?

Question

How to include russian in LaTeX (LEd) ?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb}
\usepackage[russian]{babel}
\begin{document}
Hello
\end{document}

! Package babel /b/c9/cError:/b/c0/c You haven't loaded the option english yet. See the babel package documentation for explanation. Type H for immediate help.

Answer 1

It seems this problem is caused because you are not defining the input or encoding method. Furthermore, you are specifying the use of russian language, and then writting something in english.

For russian and english, you could try the following:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb}
\usepackage[russian,english]{babel}

\begin{document}
Hello

\begin{quote}
  \selectlanguage{russian}
  Я помню чудное мгновенье:\\
  Передо мной явилась ты,\\
  Как мимолетное виденье,\\
  Как гений чистой красоты.
\end{quote}


\end{document}

Disclaimer: I don't speak Russian and and I have no idea what it says.

For more information about cyrillic, please see this post: Cyrillic in (La)TeX

Answer 2

It is probably too easy and glib to say that, now, with Xelatex (or Lualatex), Unicode, a suitable font and a choice input method, you just type.

I'm more impressed with TeX each day. And the various packages that add extra powerful functionality and the work that has gone into them.

So the answer probably depends on how much text, how you want or need to input it, and what you want to do with it, and (to a certain extent) what other text(s) surround it.

MWE

\documentclass[12pt,a5paper]{article}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\pagecolor{red!3}
\usepackage{psvectorian}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Old Standard}%Palatino Linotype}%Times New Roman}%Old Standard}%DejaVu Serif}
\setmonofont{Courier New}
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
{\huge \uppercase{Я вас любил....}}\end{center}
\begin{center}
\psvectorian[scale=0.4]{88}
\end{center}

\vskip2em
Я вас любил : любовь ещё , быть может ,

В душе моей угасла не совсем ;

Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит ;

Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.

Я вас любил безмолвно , безнадежно ,

То робостью , то ревностью томим ;

Я вас любил так искренно , так нежно ,

Как дай вам Бог любимой быть другим. 

\vskip2em
\begin{center}
\psvectorian[scale=0.4]{88}
\end{center}

\vfill\footnotesize
\noindent\texttt{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I\_Loved\_You\_(poem)}

\noindent\texttt{Журнал «Северные цветы», 1830\\
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Я\_вас\_любил…}

\newpage
\begin{center}
{\huge К ***}
\end{center}

Я помню чудное мгновенье :

Передо мной явилась ты ,

Как мимолетное виденье ,

Как гений чистой красоты.
\end{document}

Answer 3

Possibly the minimal setting for short text pieces. It provides no hyphenation rules though. (source Univ Berkeley)

• Load the Cyrillic font encoding OT2 (not T2A,T2B or T2C) and the Latin one T1.
• For the Russian text change locally the encoding to OT2.

Example,

\documentclass{article}
%VERY IMPORTANT, the principal enconding of the document must be
%the LAST option. In this case T1 (latin encoding).
\usepackage[OT2,T1]{fontenc}
%This command changes the input locally into OT2
\newcommand\textcyr[1]{{\fontencoding{OT2}\selectfont #1}}
\begin{document}
I begin with English, \textcyr{а потом перехожу на русский}.
Very practical!
\end{document}

Note: Remember, in case you need to hyphenate use \-, e.g., \textcyr{а по\-том пе\-ре\-хожу на русский}

========

I am aware that OT2 is a so-called obsolete encoding, but, precisely because of that, it is the most lightweight encoding for Russian. Moreover, it is a TeX encoding, hence not only restricted to LaTeX :).

I, personally, had the problem that both the encoding T2A and the package babel collided with two of my custom defined commands, namely, \C and \G. I wonder whether it is good practice to create such short names for the commands in packages that so many people around the world will be using :-\. Anyway, I use those commands everywhere in a very long document with a lot of included files, so I did not want to spent hours in "Search and Replace". Thank God, that the encoding OT2 does not collide with any of my commands.