What a flourishing state the Russians would bring literature to if they knew the value of their language.

E. R. Dashkova

The Department of Literature and Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Dashkova Moscow Institute for the Humanities have started reprinting a unique monument of Russian lexicography of the late 18th century - the famous Dictionary of the Russian Academy of Sciences 1789-1794 (CAP). Lexicographers from the Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and specialists in computer text processing at Bauman Moscow State Technical University are also involved in this work.

As you know, on October 21, 1783, Catherine II signed a decree on the establishment of the Russian Academy headed by E. R. Dashkova, and the first step towards her practical activity as president of the Academy was the creation of the first explanatory Dictionary of the Russian language. The personal patronage of the Empress elevated the work on the Dictionary to the rank of a national affair. Outstanding people of their time were involved in the creation of CAP: prominent writers, economists, historians, geographers, natural scientists, physicists, mathematicians, and representatives of the clergy. Among the authors of dictionary entries are G. R. Derzhavin and D. I. Fonvizin, M. M. Kheraskov and Ya. B. Knyazhnin, astronomer P. B. Inokhodtsev, physicist S. Ya. Rumovsky, physician A. P. Protasov, President of the Academy of Arts A. S. Stroganov, and many others.

E. R. Dashkova was very responsible in the mission assigned to the Academy. To quell the murmur of doubt about the need for this venture, she wrote:: "Most of our compatriots do not know their own language, and it seems to an unknown person that it is not necessary to correct it. But we must resist ridicule and ignorance and persevere in what we are doing." Four departments were created to organize the work of the team of compilers: 1) department for developing rules and procedures for compiling a dictionary; 2) grammatical - for determining the grammatical characteristics of a word; 3) explanatory - for developing interpretations, assigning a word to a particular root group; 4) publishing. The work lasted 11 years, and the publication was carried out from 1789 to 1794.

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This reprint reproduces the original text of the CAP of 1789-1794. This is a typeset facsimile edition with corrections and additions. When reproducing the text, modern technologies of computer processing of the material were used, special fonts were developed that are completely identical to the CAP font solution. The main principle of work was careful attitude and minimal interference in the Dictionary text. Thanks to this, the appearance of the text of the XVIII century is completely preserved: stylistic features of direct and italic lettering, graphic elements of pages, columns, paragraphs, lines, pagination and its elements, intervals between words in the dictionary entry.

The differences between this edition and the original of 1789-1794 include the presence in the text of the reprint of corrections of unnoticed errors made in the original of the XVIII century. These errors and typos were mostly already noticed and corrected by the permanent Secretary of the Russian Academy of Sciences, I. I. Lepekhin, back in 1801, when the corrected and supplemented reprint of the 1st volume of CAP was carried out. All errors, typos and corrections recorded in this reissue are summarized in a table and presented at the end of volume 1. Similar tables will appear at the end of each outgoing volume. The publishers also considered it possible to allow minimal unification of punctuation in grammatical marks, in the title line and in the source designations, where different variants of separators (comma, colon, semicolon) are replaced by a dot in accordance with the publication's laws. In addition, the missing or defective numbering of values has been restored.

The noted textual inaccuracies and their explanations are given at the end of each volume in the form of a summary table (in square brackets), but no corrections were made to the text of the dictionary itself.

The reprint is intended for three years, in six volumes. It is also planned to publish an additional, reference volume 7 of the Dictionary with full direct and reverse dictionaries, with summary tables of identified discrepancies and textual comments.

Volume 1 contains an introductory section consisting of several sections. The publication opens with an address from Academician E. P. Chelyshev, Secretary of the Department of Literature and Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and L. V. Tychinina, Rector of the Dashkova Moscow Institute for the Humanities.

The article "On reprinting the Dictionary of the Russian Academy of Sciences 1789-1794" by Yu. N.Filippovich, a member of the editorial board of the publication, sets out the main goals and principles of reprinting the Dictionary, contains information about the features of computer typing and information about the electronic version of CAP.

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Article by the editor-in-chief of the publication G. A. Bogatova, entitled " E. R. Dashkova and the dictionary of her era. XVIII century-a view from the XX century", has a generalizing, overview character. The author dwells in detail on the circumstances that preceded the creation of the Dictionary, and also provides important facts that characterize the state of philological science at crucial moments in the history of Russia.

The section "The Russian word that brought great benefits" will be included in each of the six volumes. This section is dedicated to those members of the Imperial Russian Academy who were most distinguished by their "hard work and usefulness" in creating an Academic Dictionary and were awarded a specially established gold medal with the words above engraved. In the first volume, this section is dedicated to E. R. Dashkova.

CAP computer typing allowed creating two versions of the dictionary: book version (six volumes) and electronic version (lexicographic information system - I With CAP). The CAP IP will be based on a dictionary database, which will also include lists of all word forms (forward and reverse dictionaries), word indicators, thematic samples, an index of sources, and a biobibliographic reference. It is planned to introduce texts of scientific publications, research, and a reference album about the dictionary creators into the CAP IP.

The technical idea, development and creation of two versions of the dictionary is the merit of the head of the Department of Bauman Moscow State Technical University Yu. N. Filippovich.

Scientific lexicographic and textual preparation for the publication, compilation of summary tables of corrections was carried out by M. I. Chernysheva.

The first scientific reprint of the Dictionary of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1789-1794) is a testament to the continuity of generations of native speakers of the Russian language and a tribute to the founders of vocabulary in Russia.

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