V. V. Vinogradov, Istoriia slov: okolo 1500 slov i vyrazhenij i bolee 5000 slov, s nimi sviazannyx, Otvetstvennyj redaktor N. Iu. Shvedova, Moskva, “Tolk”, 1994, [2], 1138 p.
by I. G. Dobrodomov
Summary
In 1994, on the occasion of the approaching centenary of Victor Vladimirovich Vinogradov (1895—1969), a collection of his works came out, which was intended to represent to the reader the full scope of the scholar’s legacy in the field of Russian historical lexicology. As a whole, however, the realization of this project does not appear to be satisfactory. Although the book is presented as a “monograph” and even a “previously unpublished study”, in reality this is a kind of historical dictionary subdivided into three obscurely opposed parts: separate articles (I), drafts (II), and excerpts from studies published during the author’s lifetime (III). The enormous work on the identification and systematization of all of Vinogradov’s materials for the history of Russian eighteenth- and nineteenth-century vocabulary and phraseology is considerably devalued, as a result of unexpected lacunae, the editors’ unmotivated interventions into the original texts, their undifferentiated attitude towards finished and unfinished entries, and above all an extremely poor archaeographical, linguistic and historical scholarly commentary.
