Active and Passive Participles
A participle is a form of a verb that's used as an adjective. An example in English is the way you can turn the verb "to run" into "the running man," where "running" is a participle
There are two main types of participles:
Active participles describe something or somebody based on the action being done by that person or thing.
For example: бегущий (begushchiy) — running
Бегущий мальчик может упасть. (Begushchiy mal'chik mozhet upast’.) — The running boy may fall.
Passive participles describe something or somebody based on the action being done to that person or thing.
For example: построенный (postroyennyy) — built
Это дом, построенный год назад. (Eto dom, postroyennyy god nazad.) — This is a house built a year ago.
Passive participles have short forms used as a predicate; active participles don’t. For example:
закрытый (zakrytyy) — closed (long form); закрыт (zakryt) — closed (short form)
Дверь закрыта. (Dver' zakryta.) — The door is closed.
Past and present participles
Like verbs, Russian participles have tenses (past or present) and aspects (imperfective, used for ongoing or habitual tasks, and perfective, used for completed or one-off tasks). Like adjectives, they also have cases, genders and numbers. Because of this, it’s fair to say that participles have the most forms of every Russian part of speech.
Examples here will be singular masculine nominative. Keep in mind that participles have the same rules as adjectives to change their forms.
Not all verbs have all the different participle forms. Here are which suffixes are used for which participle with the verb “играть” (igrat') — to play — as an example:
Active:
Present: “-ущ-”, “-ющ-”, “-ащ-”, “-ящ-”
играющий (igrayushchiy) — one that is playing
Past: “-вш-”, “-ш-”
игравший (igravshiy) — one that was playing
Passive:
Present: “-ем-”, “-им-”, “-ом-”
играемый (igrayemyy) — one that is being played
Past: “-нн-”, “-енн-”, “-т-”
игранный (igrannyy) — one that was being played
Many verbs don’t have a passive past participle, but they can be replaced by using an active past participle of a similar reflexive verb (since reflexive verbs often express passiveness). In the case of this example, “игранный” is an extremely rare word, while “игравшийся” (igravshiysya) is a lot more common. The same is sometimes done with the present passive participles: the active reflexive ones are used in their place.
Perfective verbs don’t have a present-tense form, and their participles don’t have it either. The suffixes are the same as with imperfective forms. Here’s how participles of the perfective verb “сыграть” look:
Active:
Past: сыгравший (sygravshiy) — one that has played
Passive:
Past: сыгранный (sygrannyy) — one that has been played
Future participles
While there are no future-tense participles, it’s common to place one of the future forms of the verb “быть” (byt’) — to be — in front of the short form of the present-tense imperfective, or, more frequently, past-tense perfective passive participle. This construction is, in effect, a participle placed in the future. For example:
Отчёт будет подготовлен к завтрашнему дню. (Otchyot budet podgotovlen k zavtrashnemu dnyu.) — The report will be prepared by tomorrow.
Матч будет сыгран при любой погоде. (Match budet sygran pri lyuboy pogode.) — The game will be played under any weather conditions.
