Introduction Palatalization is one of the biggest concerns in the Russian phonology. Palatalization is an articulation of a consonant in which the blade of the tongue moves toward the hard palate. For example, when the non-palatalized lateral approximant [l] sound of ‘???’(‘lacquer’) is pronounced, the tip of the tongue presses up near the teeth and the central part of the tongue is low in the mouth. On the contrary, when the palatalized [l] in ‘?????’ (‘sling’)is pronounced, the tip of thetongue presses up behind the upper teeth, and the blade and the central part of the tongue are raised towards the hard palate. There are several types of articulation observed in Russian, including velar palatalization, affricate palatalization, iotation and surface palatalization. The current paper focuses on the status of regressive palatalization in modern Russian Palatalization in Russian The articulation of almost every consonant in Russian comes in two forms, it can be either palatalized or non-palatalized. In Russian phonological works non-palatalized consonants are informally referred to as hard and palatalized are referred to as soft. Palatalization is similar but not identical for sounds of different places of articulation. Though there are these minor differences, all palatalized consonants in?uence vowels in the same way. When a given articulation occurs in both palatalized and non-palatalized forms, that articulation can be said to be paired , or mutable , for palatalization (Timberlake, 2004). Palatalization is contrastive in Russian, it can distinguish words. Compare: the initial voiceless dental1 plosive in [tomn?j] ‘languid’ vs ‘[t??mn?j]’ ‘dark’, the final voiceless dental plosive in ‘[v?p??t]’ ‘drunk down’ vs ‘[v?p??t?]’ ‘to drink down’, the final voiceless labiodental fricative ‘[g?tof]’ ‘ready’ vs ‘[g?tof?]’ ‘prepare!’. Palatalized and non-palatalized consonants occur with different degrees of freedom depending on the context (the position in the word) and depending on the consonant itself. Consonants are palatalized in Russian when are followed b? palatal approximant [j] ([pjju] – ‘I drink’), when are followed b? letters ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, as a rule, phoneticall? represented b? [e], [i], [?], [?], [æ] ([??tv?et] – ‘answer’ , [s?in?ij] – ‘blue’), when followed b? letter ‘?’ ([mat?]- ‘mother’), which does not represent any sound in particular but used only to indicate the palatalization of the preceding consonant. Regressive palatalization in Russian In Russian regressive palatalization can occur. In linguistic literature it is sometimes referred to as softness assimilation. In sequences of two consonants in which the second is palatalized, the ?rst may or may not be palatalized by assimilation. For example, in the word otd’el’n?j ‘separated’ the second dental stop [d] in the cluster is palatalized because of the vowel it is followed by, and it affects the preceding consonant making at palatalized as well: [?djdjeljn?j]. However, the regressive palatalization does not occur all the time. According to Timberlake, this is just a question of the timing of the articulatory gesture of palatalization. If the raising of the blade of the tongue occurs anticipatorily as the ?rst consonant is formed, assimilation has taken place; if raising occurs within the sequence of consonants, then assimilation has not occurred. Apparently we have the first scenario happening in the word st?anut’ ‘to strap-PERF’ where the second consonant in the cluster, palatalized voiceless dental stop [tj] palatalizes the preceding voiceless alveolar fricative [s] : [sjtj?nutj]. Another situation is taking place in the word vt?anut’ ‘to pull in-PERF’ when the same palatalized dental stop does not affect the preceding voiced labiodental fricative [v] and does not make it soft. Previous research Several Russian phonologists, including Avanesov and Krysin, studied the topic of regressive assimilation, particularly to the factors influencing the likelihood of regressive assimilation. One of the factors they agreed upon is phonetic similarities of the consonants involved in the cluster. Whether palatalization extends over both consonants or begins in the middle of the cluster depends on the extent to which the two consonants are articulatorily linked in other respects. The more linked the two consonants, the more likely it is that palatalization will extend throughout the cluster. For example, the chance of the palatalization occurring in the word [p?djdj?r?atj] ‘to support’ is very high because the two consonants composing the cluster, voiced dental stops, share the same place of articulation. The same happens when the manner of articulation is also similar. Avanesov also mentioned the morphological factor, saying that most combinations which feature palatalization occur in one morphological context, the context of pre