ИСТИНА

The Moscow Linguistic Circle, which has recently started to attract the attention of the researchers, still remains one of the most understudied phenomena in the history of Russian linguistics and poetics. The role that it played in the fields of linguistic poetics, verse studies, exact scientific methods in the humanities, semiotics and philosophy of language has not been investigated properly, because the proceedings and other materials of the MLC still await publication. The Moscow scholars developed a formal statistical approach to the study of literary language which examines all the levels of the poetic text. They concerned themselves with both synchronic and diachronic poetics, as well as literary genesis, evolution and typology. This plan was not implemented in full due to the political difficulties of that time. Digital and printed publication of the works of the Moscow Linguistic Circle with a detailed commentary and reference apparatus should be included among the priorities for the conservation of the Russian scientific and cultural-historical heritage. Among the unpublished materials of the MLC the most important place should be ascribed to the reports and minutes from the meetings of the Circle, which are now kept at the Vinogradov Institute of Russian Language in Moscow (ca 700 pp.). Another important group of materials includes unpublished papers on general philology, linguistic poetics and verse theory written by the members of the phenomenological wing of the MLC (first and foremost, Maksim Kenigsberg, whose works are preserved in Moscow archives). Filling these lacunae leads to recalibration of our contemporary vision of Russian formalism, which is less impressionistic, more fundamental, and more philosophically based than we used to think. This will enable us to effectively develop the formalist ideas in the context of the 21st century humanities. With the advent of ICT and DH, some of the statistically-based projects that seemed too large-scale and too tiresome eighty years ago (such as Boris Jarcho’s program of synchronic and diachronic statistical study of all levels of literary texts) are now well within our reach. At the same time, the practical needs, which will emerge in the process of realization of such programs, may very well stimulate the development of DH themselves (as is already the case with the computer study of verse).