Passive Participles (-емый, -нный, -тый)

A passive participle describes a noun by an action done to it — the read book, the written letter, the built house. Where active participles describe the doer (the man reading), passive participles describe the receiver (the book being read). Russian has two: a present passive that is rare and bookish, and a past passive that is everywhere and is one of the highest-value forms in the whole language — it underlies both "the read book" (an adjective) and "the book is/has been read" (a predicate). If you spend your energy anywhere in the participle system, spend it here, on the past passive.

Present passive (-емый / -имый) — rare and bookish

Form it by taking the мы-form (1st-person plural) of an imperfective transitive verb and adding -ый: чита́ем → чита́емый, лю́бим → люби́мый. The -ем- comes from 1st-conjugation verbs, -им- from 2nd. It means "(being) X-ed" right now.

In practice this participle is (literary/academic) and most live examples are lexicalized adjectives:

Past passive (-нный / -енный / -тый) — the one that matters

This is the workhorse. It is built mostly from perfective transitive verbs and means "(having been) X-ed." The ending you get depends on the verb's infinitive shape.

-ать / -ять verbs → -анный / -янный

Replace the infinitive -ть with -нный. The stress usually shifts back one syllable from the infinitive.

-ить / -еть verbs → -енный (with consonant mutation)

This is the trap. Replace -ить with -енный, but the stem consonant mutates exactly as it does in the first-person singular present/future — the same т→ч, д→ж, с→ш, п→пл, б→бл, в→вл, м→мл alternations you already know from conjugation.

Note the ё in stressed -ённый forms: решённый, приглашённый, завершённый — the dots are not optional, they mark both the spelling and the stress.

Monosyllabic / -ыть / -оть / -нуть verbs → -тый

A set of short verbs takes -тый instead: откры́ть → откры́тый, закры́ть → закры́тый, взять → взя́тый, заня́ть → за́нятый, нача́ть → на́чатый, забы́ть → забы́тый, разби́ть → разби́тый, оде́ть → оде́тый.

The long form declines like an adjective

In its long (full) form, the past passive participle is an ordinary adjective: it agrees in gender, number, and case and sits in front of (or after) its noun. This is the adjectival passive — "the read book," "a freshly painted wall."

Long form vs. the everyday short form

Here is the distinction English speakers most need. The long past passive participle (прочи́танный, напи́санный) is bookish like the other long participles — you mostly read it. But it has a short form (прочи́тан, напи́сан, постро́ен) that is completely everyday and works as a predicate: Кни́га прочи́тана ("the book is/has been read"), Дом постро́ен ("the house is built"). The short form is so important — and its one-н spelling so error-prone — that it has its own page. For now, just know that the same participle has two faces: a bookish adjective (long) and an everyday predicate (short).

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Present passive (-емый/-имый: люби́мый, уважа́емый, ви́димый) is rare and bookish — learn the lexicalized ones as vocabulary.
• Past passive (-нный/-енный/-тый) is the high-value form, mostly from perfective transitive verbs, meaning "(having been) X-ed."
• Endings track the infinitive: -ать → -анный (прочи́танный); -ить → -енный with я-form mutation (купи́ть → ку́пленный); short -ыть/-ять/-оть → -тый (откры́тый). Stressed -ённый takes ё (решённый).
• The long form declines like an adjective (прочи́танная кни́га) — this is the adjectival passive, fairly bookish.
• The same participle has a short form that is everyday and builds the result/passive predicate — see short passive participles. When an agent is named, it goes in the instrumental.
• For "the one who does/did" the action, use an active participle instead.