diff --git a/ben-cyrillic/files/russian.sh b/ben-cyrillic/files/russian.sh
index 0ec5573..95f81b5 100644
--- a/ben-cyrillic/files/russian.sh
+++ b/ben-cyrillic/files/russian.sh
@@ -2,3 +2,10 @@
 setfont2 /usr/share/ben-cyrillic/un-fuzzy-6x10-font_rus.pnm
 loadkeys /usr/share/ben-cyrillic/ben_ru_uni.map
 loadunimap /usr/share/ben-cyrillic/ben_ru_uni.trans
+profile="/etc/profile"
+locale="export LC_ALL=ru_RU.UTF-8"
+grep "$locale" "$profile" > /dev/null 2>&1
+if [ "$?" -eq "1" ]; then
+	#presumably first run, need to set the LC_ALL env
+	echo "$locale" >> "$profile"
+fi