A.I. Solzhenitsyn’s “Russian Dictionary of Language Expansion” as a Lexicographical Experiment

The purpose of the article is to analyze the concept of the “Russian Dctionary of Language Expansion” by A. I. Solzhenitsyn in line with the national lexicographic tradition. The article emphasizes the author’s continuity in the compilation of thesauruses as sources for enriching speech with obsolete words and expressions that have come out of regular communicative practice. It notes the role of V. I. Dahl as the author of the first dictionary of “The Living Great Russian Language” and his influence on the basic idea of the book by Solzhenitsyn, who inherited the classical principles of philological work with language as a phenomenon of national culture. Attention is drawn to the role of extralinguistic factors in the preparation of this publication. The study employs the following methods: comparative, semantic, sociolinguistic and textual. They have made it possible to identify the idiosyncrasies of Solzhenitsyn as a linguist, to show the originality of the method of selection and characteristics of vocabulary units, to characterize the features of the genre of the author’s lexicography works and to determine its role in linguistic science of the late 20th – early 21st centuries. The article analyzes the conceptual features of this publication: the composition and structure of the dictionary borrowed from the 19th century, the need to supplement and revive it with folk-figurative, occasional and literary elements from the heritage of Russian poets and writers of the 19th – 20th century, the concise character of the description of meanings, the presence of swear words, etc. Fragments Solzhenitsyn’s letters are used for contextual comparison. The article formulates idea about the need to treat the visual and expressive side of the language carefully and to restore and preserve the lost fragments of everyday speech of the past as facts of traditional verbal culture. The urgency of the book is seen in it being a successful experience of metaphilological understanding and restoration of classical linguistic works. The results of the study can be used in the theory and practice of compiling experimental dictionaries, in hermeneutics, in the historico-cultural study of the lexicographic heritage of the 19th – 20th centuries. They can motivate scholars to search for new ideas and methods of analyzing texts presenting interest for the formation of the basic values of the national linguistic worldview.