The Russian Genitive Case: Кого? Чего?

The genitive case (родительный падеж) is the busiest case in Russian. If the accusative is "the object" and the prepositional is "location", the genitive is everything to do with belonging, absence, and amount. It answers Кого? Чего? — of whom? of what?

You reach for it constantly, so it pays to learn its triggers as a set.

1. What the genitive does

1.1 Possession and "of"

The core meaning — who something belongs to, or what it is part of:

• книга брата — the brother's book
• центр города — the centre of the city

1.2 Absence — нет + genitive

To say something is not there, the missing thing goes into the genitive:

• У меня нет времени. — I have no time.
• Здесь нет молока. — There is no milk here.

The same holds in the past and future with не было and не будет: вчера не было дождя, завтра не будет урока. This is also why a negated verb often pulls its object out of the accusative and into the genitive — the full picture is in the negation guidesoon.

1.3 Quantity words

много, мало, сколько, несколько, plus measures like стакан, килограмм:

• много работы (a lot of work), стакан воды (a glass of water), килограмм сахара (a kilo of sugar).

The genitive after actual numbers (два, пять, …) is the same instinct — see numbers and countingsoon.

1.4 After many prepositions

из, от, до, для, без, у, около, после, против, кроме:

• из дома (from home), без сахара (without sugar), у друга (at a friend's), после урока (after the lesson).

2. The endings

Masculine and neuter take -а / -я; feminine takes -ы / -и (remember the spelling rule: книги, not книгы). As with every case, the ending you pick starts from the noun's gender.

3. After numbers

Numbers force the counted noun into a specific form — this is one of the most useful patterns in the language:

4. The genitive plural

The genitive plural is the hardest ending in Russian, so learn its three main shapes:

• Masculine usually adds -ов / -ев (стол → столов, музей → музеев) or -ей after -ь and hushing stems (словарь → словарей, нож → ножей).
• Feminine -а and neuter -о drop the vowel to a zero ending, often inserting a fill vowel: книга → книг, окно → окон, сестра → сестёр, де́вушка → де́вушек.
• Feminine -я / -ь and many soft stems take -ей (неделя → недель, дверь → дверей).

5. Examples

• Это машина моего отца. — This is my father's car.
• У нас нет хлеба. — We have no bread.
• Я выпил стакан сока. — I drank a glass of juice.
• В классе пять студентов. — There are five students in the class.
• Она пришла из школы. — She came from school.
• Мне двадцать лет. — I am twenty years old.

6. Test yourself

The genitive rewards repetition: its triggers become automatic fast. Drill them with full case packs in the Uchim app.