Discussion
Vvedenïe v gïstorïju evropeiskuju (1718) is the first extensive historical work published in Russia. As was often the case in the eighteenth century, the text is a translation of a Western European work. Beyond it‘s historical and cultural context, the text‘s linguistic aspects are of particular interest, as they reflect the processes shaping the Russian standard language during the era of Peter I.
The eighteenth century is regarded as a pivotal phase in the formation of the modern Russian standard language. Aiming to modernise the backward and isolated country, Peter I initiated a large-scale reform process affecting all domains. Particular focus was set on the army and navy, administration, craftsmanship, education and science. Western Europe served as a model for these reforms. Since Muscovy lacked qualified personnel to implement them, educated foreigners – often Ukrainians – were appointed to state service, while efforts were made to train specialists within Russia itself.
To that end, Western European literature in these fields was translated on a massive scale. Vvedenïe v″ gïstorïju evropeiskuju is the first Russian translation of Samuel Pufendorf’s Introduction to the History of the Principal Kingdoms and States of Europe, made by the Ukrainian cleric Havryïl Bužyns′kyj. As Bužyns′kyj did not know German, his translation was based on the Latin edition.
Alongside these steps towards a culturally and technically competitive country, there were major efforts to simplify the language. Until the late seventeenth century, Russian lacked key features of a standard language, and scholarly writing was done in Church Slavonic. During the Petrine reforms, Church Slavonic gradually ceded this function to a new, unstable written form combining elements of Russian, Ukrainian, and Church Slavonic, as well as numerous Western European loanwords.
Pogodin noted in 1846 that out of this “chaotic mass” the Russian word emerged, and that the Petrine reforms were crucial for the natural course of things (Pogodin 1846: 349). Aleksander Issatschenko characterises this transitional state as “cluelessness”, “language chaos”, or “language confusion” (Issatschenko 1983: 528 et seqq.), while Viktor Živov refers to it as the “Petrine pool” – a melting pot of linguistic influences (Živov 2017: 961 et seqq.).
Besides orthographical, morphological, lexical, and syntactic features from these layers, the text displays a wide range of grammatical features used side by side, often without recognisable logic.
The paper analyses Vvedenïe v″ gïstorïju evropeiskuju for grammatical features traceable to this textual multilingualism, such as alternating case endings, pronouns, and tenses – to shed light on linguistic phenomena and central tendencies in the standardisation of Russian in the eighteenth century, thus contributing to the description of this decisive phase of transformation.
