What is the Instrumental case in the Russian language?

Hello, my dear Russian learner!

Cases are one of the most difficult rules in the Russian language, so let's figure them out together!

We’ve already written a short explanation about what cases are and how many there are in Russian. You can read it here.

Let us briefly remind you that a case is a grammatical category that determines the role of several parts of speech in a sentence, expresses their relationship with each other and conveys the meaning of what is said. It's what word order often does in other languages.

Case applies to nouns, pronouns, as well as the adjectives, numerals and participles that depend on them. They are declined by case, which means the ending of the word changes.

There are six cases in Russian in total. We’ve already explained four of them:

• Nominative 
• Genitive  
• Dative 
• Accusative

And now let’s talk about the Instrumental case. 

What does the Instrumental case indicate?

It answers the questions “кем? чем?” (by whom? with what?) for nouns and pronouns, “каким? какой? каким? Какими?” (with what kind of…?) for adjectives and participles and “сколькими?” (with how many?) for numerals.

1. The Instrumental case indicates the instrument of an action: “есть ложкой” (to eat with a spoon) “рубить топором” (to chop with an ax), as well as the accompaniment of an action “гулять с собакой” (to walk a dog).
2. When using the passive voice, the subject of the active voice (which would be in the Nominative case) is put into the form of the Instrumental case. For example, “Ветер сорвал крышу” (The wind tore off the roof) turns into “Крышу сорвало ветром" (The roof was torn off by the wind).
3. From the form of nouns in the Instrumental case, some adverbs denoting time were forms from the nouns put in the Instrumental case. For example, “летом” (in the summer) or “вечером” (in the evening). As well as adverbs of qualities or circumstances: “бегом” (running) or “авансом” (in advance).

The Instrumental case is often used with prepositions: ‘c’ (with), ‘за’ (behind/for), ‘под’ (under), ‘над’ (above), ‘между’ (between) and ‘перед’ (in front of).

Below is an example of what the endings for nouns look like according to the three types of declension in the Instrumental case:

If you want to learn more about the cases and Russian grammar, make sure you sign up to our free Russian language course!