Past tense

1. The past tense in Russian is formed from the infinitive stem. You simply drop the infinitive ending and add the past tense ending.
2. Verbs in the past tense do not have a different ending for each person. Past tense endings agree only with the gender and number of the subject of the sentence

masculine	Максим читал газету.
feminine	Нина играла в парке.
neuter	Письмо было на столе.
plural	Дети смотрели телевизор.

3. Masculine nouns that end in -a or -я will take the masculine form of the verb in the past tense:
   Папа читал газету.
4. Unlike English, Russian has only one past tense form. Each of these English expressions can be translated into Russian with only one form:

   I worked.	Я работал
   I was working.
   I did work.
   I had worked.
   I had been working.

5. Russian does not have the verb "to be" in the present tense. In the past tense, however, Russian does have this verb. The infinitive form of the verb is быть.

   masculine	был
   feminine	была
   neuter	было
   plural	были

6. The interrogative pronoun кто always goes with the masculine form of the verb:
   Кто читал?
7. The interrogative pronoun что always goes with the neuter form of the verb:
   Что это было?
8. The past tense of reflexive verbs is formed in the same way as with non-reflexive. Remember to add the reflexive particle (сь after vowels, ся after consonants) after you add all other endings:

   masculine	начинался
   feminine	начиналась
   neuter	начиналось
   plural	начинались