Today there are some 2 million speakers of Kyrgyz in the Republic of Kyrgyzstan where it is the national language. There is a degree of confusion about to what the terms Kyrgyz and Kazakh actually refer. Kazakh is a reference to the people and language of Kazakhstan while Kyrgyz is now the standard terminology for the people and language of Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyz has two dialects: Northern and Southern. While standard modern Kyrgyz is based on the northern dialect (which receives significant influence from the Mongolian language), the principal influence of the northern dialect is Kazakh, while Uzbek has been the greatest influence on the Southern dialect. Not until the Soviet period was the Kyrgyz language standardized after it began to be used for governmental purposes along with Russian. No Kyrgyz language press operated before the Russian Revolution but by 1983 there were 61 Kyrgyz-language newspapers and 16 journals. In 1983 alone, 513 books were published in the Kyrgyz language.