Active Participles in Russian

In Brief

A Russian active participle describes a person or thing that performs an action: читающий студент “a student who is reading” and пришедшие гости “the guests who arrived.” It is built from a verb but agrees and declines like an adjective. Present forms usually use -ущ-/-ющ- or -ащ-/-ящ-; past forms usually use -вш- or -ш-.

Overview

A participle is a verb form used to describe a noun (a word for a person, place, thing, or idea). In читающий студент, the noun студент performs the action “read,” so читающий is an active participle. It still carries verbal information: it can show time and aspect and can keep the verb's objects or other dependents. At the same time, it behaves like an adjective: its ending matches the noun in gender, number, and case.

English often uses an -ing form or a relative clause with “who” or “that.” Russian can do something similar, but participles are much more characteristic of edited, academic, official, and literary writing than of relaxed conversation. In everyday speech, a relative clause with который is frequently more natural: студент, который читает rather than читающий студент.

This B1 topic builds directly on adjective endings. The main task is not merely memorizing suffixes: you must identify the verb stem, choose present or past, and then add the adjective ending required by the sentence.

How It Works

One form, two sets of properties

An active participle combines properties of a verb and an adjective.

Verbal property	Example	What it tells you
Tense	читающий / читавший	reading now/then versus having read or being someone who read
Aspect	читавший / прочитавший	an ongoing/repeated action versus a completed action
Objects and complements	читающий книгу	книгу remains the direct object (the thing read)
Reflexive marker	улыбающийся	the verb's -ся is retained

The adjective ending then agrees with the noun:

• читающий студент — masculine singular
• читающая студентка — feminine singular
• читающее лицо — neuter singular
• читающие студенты — plural

Present active participles

Present active participles normally come from imperfective verbs, which present an action as ongoing, repeated, or not viewed as completed. Start with the third-person plural present form—the “they” form—remove final -т, and add -щий. This gives the suffixes seen in the finished participle.

Infinitive	“They” form	Stem after removing -т	Masculine participle	Meaning
читать	читают	читаю-	читающий	reading; who is reading
работать	работают	работаю-	работающий	working; who works
нести	несут	несу-	несущий	carrying; who is carrying
говорить	говорят	говоря-	говорящий	speaking; who speaks
видеть	видят	видя-	видящий	seeing; who sees

In practical terms:

• third-person plural in -ут/-ют produces -ущ-/-ющ-: несут → несущий, читают → читающий;
• third-person plural in -ат/-ят produces -ащ-/-ящ-: дышат → дышащий, говорят → говорящий.

Do not form this participle directly by cutting -ть from the infinitive. The present-tense stem may change: писать → пишут → пишущий, not писающий in the intended sense “writing.”

Perfective verbs do not have a true present tense: forms such as прочитают refer to the future. Standard Russian therefore does not normally make present active participles from them. Use an imperfective verb for a simultaneous or ongoing action: читающий, not a form based on прочитать.

Past active participles

Past active participles can be formed from both imperfective and perfective verbs. For many verbs whose past masculine form ends in -л, replace that -л with -вш-, then add the adjective ending:

Infinitive	Masculine past	Masculine participle	Typical meaning
читать	читал	читавший	who was reading/read repeatedly
работать	работал	работавший	who worked/used to work
прочитать	прочитал	прочитавший	who read and completed it
сделать	сделал	сделавший	who did/made it

When the past stem ends in a consonant and has no -л, -ш- is common: нести → нёс → нёсший, расти → рос → росший. Some frequent verbs have stem changes that are best learned as complete forms: прийти → пришедший, уйти → ушедший, найти → нашедший.

The contrast between imperfective and perfective matters:

• человек, читавший книгу — a person who was reading the book, read it repeatedly, or took part in that activity;
• человек, прочитавший книгу — a person who finished reading the book.

The exact English translation depends on context. A Russian past active participle may correspond to “who did,” “who was doing,” “who had done,” or an English participial phrase.

Reflexive verbs keep -ся

If the source verb ends in -ся/-сь, the participle keeps -ся, placed after its adjective ending:

• улыбаться → улыбающийся ребёнок
• интересоваться → интересовавшийся историей студент
• вернуться → вернувшиеся туристы

Unlike finite verbs, participles use -ся even after a vowel ending: улыбающаяся, улыбающиеся.

Declension and agreement

Active participles use the endings of full adjectives. The participial suffix remains stable; the final ending changes. Here is читающий in the singular.

Case	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Nominative	читающий	читающая	читающее
Genitive	читающего	читающей	читающего
Dative	читающему	читающей	читающему
Accusative	читающий / читающего	читающую	читающее
Instrumental	читающим	читающей	читающим
Prepositional	читающем	читающей	читающем

The masculine accusative follows the normal animacy rule: вижу читающего студента because the student is animate, but вижу работающий механизм because the mechanism is inanimate. In the plural, the endings follow the same pattern as plural adjectives: nominative читающие, genitive and prepositional читающих, dative читающим, and instrumental читающими. The accusative is читающих for animate nouns but читающие for inanimate nouns.

Agreement is with the noun being described, not with any noun inside the participial phrase:

• Мы говорили со студенткой, прочитавшей книгу.

Here прочитавшей is instrumental feminine because it agrees with студенткой. The object книгу does not control the ending.

Participles express relative time

“Present” and “past” are interpreted in relation to the action or situation being discussed, not always directly in relation to the moment of speaking.

• Я вижу человека, переходящего улицу. — The crossing is simultaneous with seeing.
• Я видел человека, переходящего улицу. — The crossing was simultaneous with seeing in the past.
• Я встретил человека, перешедшего улицу. — The crossing was completed before the meeting.

This relative timing is one reason a word-for-word English tense label can be misleading.

Examples in Context

Russian	English	Note
читающий студент	a student who is reading	Present, masculine singular
Работающие люди ждали автобус.	The people who were working waited for the bus.	Present participle describing a group
Девочка, сидящая у окна, рисует.	The girl sitting by the window is drawing.	Ongoing simultaneous action
Мы слышали детей, поющих во дворе.	We heard the children singing in the courtyard.	Accusative plural, animate
Она подошла к мужчине, держащему зонт.	She approached the man holding an umbrella.	Dative masculine after к
Это система, работающая без интернета.	This is a system that works without internet access.	A general property
Прочитавший книгу человек задал хороший вопрос.	The person who had read the book asked a good question.	Completed prior action
Пришедшие гости сняли пальто.	The guests who had arrived took off their coats.	Irregular past stem
Мы поблагодарили врача, спасшего пациента.	We thanked the doctor who had saved the patient.	Past participle in the accusative
Документы, лежавшие на столе, исчезли.	The documents that had been lying on the desk disappeared.	Imperfective past, continuing state
Туристы, вернувшиеся вечером, сразу легли спать.	The tourists who returned in the evening went straight to bed.	Reflexive perfective participle
Я разговаривал со студентами, изучавшими русский язык.	I spoke with students who were studying Russian.	Instrumental plural

Common Mistakes

Building the present form from the infinitive

• Wrong: писающий письмо студент
• Right: пишущий письмо студент
• Why: Use the third-person plural present form: пишут → пишущий. The present stem, not the visible infinitive stem, determines the form.

Making a present participle from a perfective verb

• Wrong: прочитающий книгу студент for “the student who is reading the book”
• Right: читающий книгу студент
• Why: Прочитать is perfective and has no genuine present tense. For an action in progress, use imperfective читать.

Forgetting agreement

• Wrong: девушка, читающий книгу
• Right: девушка, читающая книгу
• Why: The participle agrees with девушка, so it must be feminine nominative singular.

Letting the object control the ending

• Wrong: со студенткой, прочитавшую книгу
• Right: со студенткой, прочитавшей книгу
• Why: The participle describes студенткой and therefore takes instrumental feminine. Книгу is merely the object of “read.”

Dropping the reflexive marker

• Wrong: улыбающий ребёнок
• Right: улыбающийся ребёнок
• Why: The source verb is улыбаться. Its reflexive marker remains in the participle.

Copying English too literally

• Awkward in casual speech: Человек, стоящий там, — мой брат.
• Often more conversational: Человек, который там стоит, — мой брат.
• Why: The participle is grammatical, but Russian conversation often prefers a который clause. Do not assume every English “-ing” phrase should become a Russian participle.

Usage Notes

Active participles are productive and normal, but register matters. You will meet them constantly in news reports, instructions, academic prose, descriptions, and official documents: лица, проживающие по данному адресу “persons residing at this address.” They compress information and avoid a chain of relative clauses. In conversation, that same compression may sound heavy or bureaucratic.

A single participle before a noun is often easy and natural: следующий поезд “the next train,” работающий компьютер “a functioning computer.” Some participles become adjective-like and are learned almost as vocabulary items. A longer phrase is more likely to be replaced in speech by который: люди, которые работают в этом здании.

Word order and punctuation also matter. A participle plus its dependents forms a participial phrase—a group such as читающий книгу. When that phrase follows the noun, it is normally set off with commas:

• Студент, читающий книгу, не услышал вопрос.

Before the noun, a neutral identifying phrase normally has no comma:

• Читающий книгу студент не услышал вопрос.

Punctuation has further semantic and stylistic exceptions, especially when a phrase carries an added causal or concessive meaning. At B1, the safest pattern is: after the noun, use commas; before the noun, normally do not.

Beyond the Basics / Advanced Use

Participles can replace relative clauses—but not mechanically

A relative clause with который makes tense and sentence structure explicit:

Participial version	Relative-clause version	Main effect
студент, читающий статью	студент, который читает статью	Compact, more written
студент, читавший статью	студент, который читал статью	Past activity, result not emphasized
студент, прочитавший статью	студент, который прочитал статью	Completed past action

The participle must describe the noun as the performer of its action. If the noun receives the action, an active participle is wrong and a passive construction may be needed. Compare автор, написавший статью “the author who wrote the article” with статья, написанная автором “the article written by the author.”

Tense and aspect create precise timelines

Russian can combine the participle's relative time with the tense of the main verb. In Он рассказал о людях, работавших там раньше, the work predates or belongs to the earlier period under discussion. In Он рассказал о людях, работающих там сейчас, their work is presented as current. A perfective past participle strongly suggests a completed prior event: учёный, открывший новый элемент.

Not every theoretically possible participle is equally common. Some forms are rare, awkward, or replaced by established alternatives. When a dictionary or reliable corpus shows that native writers prefer a который clause, follow that usage rather than forcing the formation rule.

Active participles have no short forms

Russian active participles use full adjective-style forms. Short forms such as написан belong to passive participles, not active ones. If you need a predicate meaning “is working” or “was reading,” use an ordinary finite verb: компьютер работает, он читал.

Practice Tips

1. Work backward from the “they” form. Choose five imperfective verbs, write forms such as читают, говорят, несут, remove -т, and build читающий, говорящий, несущий. This exposes stem changes early.
2. Transform relative clauses in both directions. Change люди, которые работают здесь into люди, работающие здесь, then change it back. Include different cases so agreement becomes automatic.
3. Mark three layers when reading. Underline the noun, circle the participle ending, and bracket the participle's object or complement. In со студентами, изучавшими русский язык, this makes it clear why изучавшими agrees with студентами, not язык.

Related Concepts

• Prerequisite: Adjective Case Endings — active participles use the same agreement and declension system as full adjectives.
• Next step: Verbal Adverbs (Gerunds) — verbal adverbs describe an additional action performed by the subject of the main verb.
• Advanced next step: Participle Clauses — develops word order, punctuation, and the use of expanded participial phrases.