Past Tense

Take the infinitive, drop -ть, and append one of four suffixes that matches the subject's gender and number. The same scheme works for both aspects and for almost every verb, the past tense is by far the simplest tense to form in Russian.

The past-tense marker -л is historically a Slavic participle, which is why the form behaves like an adjective and agrees with the subject. Verbs whose infinitive ends in -ти or -чь form the past differently; we cover them in Special past forms below.

The past form agrees with the subject, not with the speaker. Я can be either gender, so the verb tells the listener which: Я читал works only if the speaker is masculine; a female speaker says Я читала. The same applies to ты: its form depends on the addressee's gender.

The four-form past paradigm is identical across conjugations. Whether the verb is 1st conj (читать), 2nd conj (говорить), reflexive (смеяться), or an -овать verb (рисовать), you see the same four endings -л / -ла / -ло / -ли.

The я- and ты-rows show both gender alternatives because the pronoun is gender-neutral. The он/она/оно row shows masculine · feminine · neuter side-by-side. Plural subjects of any gender share a single -ли form.

Three groups of verbs deviate from the drop--ть-and-add--л recipe: infinitives ending in -чь or -ти, and a handful of -нуть verbs that drop the suffix in past. One verb, идти, is fully suppletive.

In the -чь and -ти groups, the masculine singular drops -л entirely: он мог (not могл), он нёс (not несл). Feminine, neuter, and plural restore the -л-: могла, могло, могли. The underlying stem in -г- / -к- (for -чь) or -с- / -з- (for -ти) is fully visible in these forms.

For a deeper treatment of the verbs whose stems alternate, see the Consonant Alternation and Irregular Verbs chapters.

Most verbs keep the infinitive's stress through the past paradigm. But a small, high-frequency group of monosyllabic verbs shifts stress to the ending in the feminine singular, and only there. The masculine, neuter, and plural stay on the root.

Other members of this group: брать → брал, брала, брало, брали (take), звать → звал, звала, звало, звали (call), спать → спал, спала, спало, спали (sleep), дать → дал, дала, дало, дали (give, pf.). The pattern is consistent and worth memorising as a closed set.

The reflexive particle -ся attaches at the very end, after the gender/number suffix. After a consonant it stays -ся; after a vowel it shrinks to -сь. So the masculine singular keeps -ся (consonant ending: -л), and the other three forms take -сь (vowel ending: -ла, -ло, -ли).

Stress in the reflexive past usually matches the non-reflexive verb. A few high-frequency verbs ( начаться, заняться, раздаться) shift stress in the feminine the same way the monosyllabic group does, so начаться → начался, началась, началось, начались.

Both aspects use exactly the same four-form past paradigm. The difference is in meaning: an imperfective past describes a process, repeated action, or unspecified duration; a perfective past describes a single completed action with a result.

The same root often gives an aspect pair: imperfective and perfective forms that share a meaning but differ in completion (читать / прочитать, ездить / поехать). Choosing between them is one of the central tasks of Russian usage; the dedicated Aspect chapter covers when and why.