Serbian Language Mirrored in the 21st-Century Russian Slavic Studies

Abstract

This paper explores the prevailing scientific hypothesis on the identity of the Serbian language in the 21 st -century Russian Slavic studies, which is aimed at valorising the influence of the Serbian studies on establishing the Russian concept of the polycentric nature of the Serbian language. The analysis is conducted on the corpus of scholarly and professional papers dealing with Serbo-Croatian, published in Russia over the past twenty years. The results of the research point to the conclusion that, when determining the identity of the Serbian language and usage of certain linguonyms are concerned, most Russian Slavic scholars do not comply with the findings of the scholarly Serbian studies (hypothesis of M. Kovacevic), but with the Serbo-Croatian doctrine developed by V. P. Gutkov, that is, the theory of variants by M.Ivic.