The article is devoted to the problem of reflecting the variability of the Russian dialect word in dialect dictionaries published in Russia from the 19th to the 21st centuries. The study aims to consider the method of presenting different types of variants of a dialect word in various dialect dictionaries, with the main attention being paid to the analysis of works of dialect lexicography created since the middle of the 20th century until now. The submission of variants in the “Pskov Regional Dictionary”, which has been worked on at Leningrad State University — St. Petersburg State University (and Pskov Pedagogical Institute — Pskov State University) since the 1950s, is analyzed in most detail. Research objectives: to study, based on the relevant sections of the introductions and prefaces to dialect dictionaries of the Russian language, what exactly the authors of dictionaries consider to be variants of a dialect word, what types of variants they distinguish and how they are presented in their dictionaries. The novelty of the work lies in the consideration of the problem under study on the basis of a wide range of dialect dictionaries published in different regions of Russia and differently interpreting the theory of variance and describing lexical variation. The material of the study is both the theoretical introductory sections of Russian dialect dictionaries — namely, those parts that are devoted to the variability of the dialect lexeme — and the dialect dictionaries themselves, which differently present certain types of word variants in the dictionary and in a separate dictionary entry.