History and principles of compilation of the large Soviet Academy Dictionary of Russian (1950-1965)

Abstract

Nobody today would seriously dispute the importance of dictionaries. The value of dictionaries is attested to by the fact that they have been with us for sane hundreds of years. However, it is not to the past that we should look for a justification of lexicography, but to the present. Having regard to the gigantic volume of material published nowadays in both printed and spoken form; to the far-reaching spread of education and the concamitant battle _against the last strongholds of illiteracy; to the efforts being made by the nations not only to settle their differences by words rather than by force of arms, but also to cooperate actively in peaceful enterprises: in short, with the great expansion of the means of communication and the corresponding increase in the load that language is made to bear, we cannot but agree that "the lexicographer's task is of graving inportance in our world.