Перед совещанием я разложил документы на столе.

Because the preposition перед normally takes the instrumental case when it means before or in front of.

• совещание = nominative
• совещанием = instrumental

So:

• перед совещанием = before the meeting

This is true for both time and space:

• перед домом = in front of the house
• перед совещанием = before the meeting

Both can mean before the meeting, but they are not always identical.

• перед совещанием often means right before or in the period just before
• до совещания is a more general before / prior to / by the time of

In this sentence, перед совещанием sounds very natural if the speaker is describing something done shortly before the meeting started.

Разложил is:

• past tense
• masculine
• singular
• perfective

Russian past tense agrees with the speaker’s gender in the singular:

• я разложил = if the speaker is male
• я разложила = if the speaker is female

So this sentence suggests a male speaker. If a woman said it, it would be:

• Перед совещанием я разложила документы на столе.

This is a question of aspect.

• разложил = perfective: the action was completed
• раскладывал = imperfective: the action is seen as a process, repeated action, or background action

Here, the speaker is talking about a finished action done before the meeting, so разложил fits well.

Compare:

• Я разложил документы на столе. = I laid out the documents on the table. The action is done.
• Я раскладывал документы на столе. = I was laying out / used to lay out the documents on the table.

Разложить usually means to lay out, spread out, or arrange in separate places/on a surface.

It often suggests that something is being placed neatly or distributed rather than just put down once.

Compare:

• положить документы = put the documents down
• разложить документы = lay out the documents, spread them out, arrange them

So in this sentence, разложил suggests more than just placing the documents somewhere. It gives the idea of arranging them on the table.

Документы is the accusative plural, but for inanimate masculine nouns, the accusative plural looks the same as the nominative plural.

So:

• nominative plural: документы
• accusative plural: документы

Because документы is an inanimate direct object, the form does not change.

If the noun were animate, the accusative would often look like the genitive instead.

This is about the difference between location and destination.

• на столе = on the table (location)
• на стол = onto the table (direction/destination)

In this sentence, на столе suggests that the documents were laid out on the surface of the table. The focus is on where they were arranged.

If you said:

• разложил документы на стол

that would sound more like put the documents onto the table from somewhere else.

So the difference is:

• на столе = where they ended up arranged
• на стол = movement onto the table

Столе is the prepositional case singular of стол.

The preposition на can take different cases:

• на стол = accusative, when there is movement onto something
• на столе = prepositional, when something is located on something

So here:

• стол → на столе

This is a very common pattern:

• в офисе = in the office
• на столе = on the table
• в городе = in the city

Yes. Russian word order is flexible, and the meaning usually stays the same, though the emphasis changes.

The original:

• Перед совещанием я разложил документы на столе.

Other possible orders:

• Я перед совещанием разложил документы на столе.
• Документы я разложил на столе перед совещанием.

The original version sounds natural because it starts with the time expression перед совещанием, setting the scene first: Before the meeting...

The main stresses are:

• перед совеща́нием
• я разложи́л
• докуме́нты
• на столе́

Stress matters in Russian, so it is worth learning words together with their stress patterns.