Scientist, enlightener, innovator... (to the 100th anniversary of the birth of N. M. Shansky)

Abstract

The paper concerns the centenary of M. N. Shansky’s birth and provides a brief overview of those aspects of the scholar’s scientific and creative activity which he was involved in as an initiator of traditions and an innovator. For instance, he authored the first higher education textbook "Phraseology of Modern Russian". Moreover, the structure and content of the textbook "Lexicology of Modern Russian" became models for the authors of other vocabulary textbooks for many decades. The popular science genre of "history of words" targeted at teachers and schoolchildren was developed in N. M. Shansky’s papers and books. The popularisation of the genre in the pages of the "Russian Language at School" journal (N. M. Shansky was its editor-in-chief for over 40 years) made the "history of words" an integral part of the Russian language teaching process. N. M. Shansky played a significant role in the development of Russian phraseology and phraseography. He not only created an expanded, in comparison with V. V. Vinogradov’s, typology of phraseological units of the Russian language, but also authored and co-authored many phraseological dictionaries, including the first etymological dictionary of Russian phraseological units. N. M. Shansky also occupied a special place in the history of Russian lexicography: he authored and co-authored a host of Russian language dictionaries, including the multi-volume "Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language", and several typologically new dictionaries. Moreover, as the author of the lexicography section in a textbook on lexicology, he laid the foundations for the tradition of typologic al characterisation of Russian dictionaries. The content of his essays about dictionaries is also valuable. I prove this thesis in more detail using N. M. Shansky’s essay on the "Shakhmatov’s" academic dictionary of the Russian language. This paper attempts not only to comprehensively characterise the legacy of N. M. Shansky as a lexicologist, phraseologist, lexicographer, and methodologist, but also to emphasise his innovation and the invaluable contribution he made to the development of national science and education.