…I have been waiting all my life for a radical change in my lifestyle”: Correspondence of academician I.I. Meshchaninov with V.V. Vinogradov 1942–1958

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the 140th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding Russian scientist, organizer of Soviet science, first academician-secretary of the Department of Literature and Language of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Hero of Socialist Labor I.I. Meshchaninov (1883–1967). It reflects little-known events in Russian linguistics of 1942–1958. The letters of the greatest linguists of the XX century — academician I.I. Meshchaninov and professor (later academician) V.V. Vinogradov are published for the first time. They set out the facts of the personal life of scientists and the activities of academic institutions during the evacuation and peacetime. The presented selection of epistolary materials tells about the work of V.V. Vinogradov in Tobolsk: an attempt to found there a Research institute for the study of languages, folklore, literature and history of the peoples of Siberia and I.I. Meshchaninov’s response to this idea, about a new book on lexis and phraseology, conveys the scientist’s anxiety about his wife’s Moscow apartment, etc. The prospects of V.V. Vinogradov’s relocation to other cities and his restoration in the staff of the Institute of Language and Thinking of the USSR Academy of Sciences are discussed. Judging by the events described, I.I. Meshchaninov took a lively part in the fate of a disgraced colleague and tried to help him overcome hardships. The letters of the 1950s describe events related to the preparation for the elections of academicians and corresponding members of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The epistolary also includes the names of many famous philologists whose destinies were somehow connected with the personality of I.I. Meshchaninov: S.P. Obnorsky, V.F. Shishmaryov, D.V. Bubrikh, A.V. Mirtov, etc. The published documents are of interest to historians of Soviet linguistics, linguoculturologists, sociolinguists. The letters reveal the rare circumstances of the work of research teams in a difficult time for the country, show linguists from an unusual side, report new biographical details, filling in the gaps in the historiography of the XX century. The article focuses the attention of modern researchers on the need to study archival data and introduce original materials into the theory and practice of general linguistics in order to recreate the annals of Russian science.