Cyrillic inclusions

Question

I want to include just a few words and letters in cyrillic in a mostly english text. For instance, I would like to write the name "Aleksandrov" in cyrillic characters. I did not find a simple way to do this and I would be grateful for some help on this matter.

Answer 1

You can use the babel package and switch to a foreign language in between your normal English text:

\documentclass{book}

\usepackage[T2A,T1]{fontenc}    
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}     
\usepackage[russian,english]{babel}

\begin{document}

text

\foreignlanguage{russian}{Видимое свечение чистых жидкостей под действием $\gamma$-радиации}

text

\end{document}

Answer 2

For very small Russian inserts, using the OT2 encoding might be useful because it has an easy transliteration system

The table is from an article of mine published on ArsTeXnica

Here's how to get a few names:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[OT2,T1]{fontenc}

\DeclareFontFamilySubstitution{OT2}{\rmdefault}{wncyr}

\DeclareRobustCommand{\rn}[1]{% russian name
  {\fontencoding{OT2}\selectfont#1}%
}

\begin{document}

\rn{Aleksandrov}

\rn{Moskva}

\rn{Dostoevskii0}

\end{document}

Note: see edit history for a previous solution using the substitutefont package, now declared obsolete.