Comrade Stalin, you are a great scientist, You know a lot about linguistics... Not least thanks to this song by Yuz Aleshkovsky, the fact of Stalin's "involvement" in the science of language is widely known. And the stereotype of thinking begins to work: if the "leader and teacher" interfered in this science, then he probably did something criminal. This is not true, but it is not easy to refute an ingrained misconception. There was even such a curious incident. In Literaturnaya Gazeta (No. 5, 1992) there appeared an article written jointly by Natalia Ilina, a writer and scientist, and L. L. Kasatkin, a Doctor of Philology. Authoritative authors have provided convincing evidence that Stalin's intervention in linguistics was not only not disastrous for this science, but even played a positive role. But on another page of the same issue of the newspaper, an author far from linguistics declared that after the appearance of the article "father of nations", " the elimination of all classical linguistics began." Such is the" record of pluralism "set by"Literatura"! And most recently, this year, in the program "Orbeli Dynasty" on the Kultura TV channel, the phrase was heard: "... the infamous article of Stalin appeared." In the journalistic articles of recent decades, the idea was repeatedly carried out that Stalin "defamed" the great scientist-N. Ya. Marr. Non-linguists ' ideas about the history of Russian language science are surprisingly far from the truth. An article dedicated to the centenary of S. I. Vavilov was published in Moskovskaya Pravda on 23.3.91. Here is how its author imagines the position of linguistics among other sciences in the years when the Academy of Sciences was headed by S. N. Vavilov: "It was a time when genetics and cybernetics were smashed, psychology and quantum mechanics were stifled, when it was not safe to mention the theory of relativity, and in linguistics they equaled the" works " of the father of nations." To appreciate the author's "awa ... Read more