Sergey Ozhegov

Sergey Ivanovich Ozhegov is a linguist, lexicographer, Doctor of Philological Sciences, and professor.

Ozhegov was born on September 22 (9), 1900, in the village of Kamennoye (now Kuvshinovo) in the Novotorzhsky district of Tver province. In the spring of 1909, he moved with his family to St. Petersburg and began studying at the 5th gymnasium. In the summer of 1918, he graduated from the gymnasium and enrolled in the Faculty of Linguistics of Material Culture at Petrograd University. However, at the end of 1918, he left the university and enlisted as a volunteer in the Red Army. After the end of military actions, he returned to the philological faculty of Petrograd University.

In 1926, he completed his studies and, upon the recommendation of his teachers V.V. Vinogradov, L.V. Shcherba, and B.M. Lyapunov, was recommended for graduate studies at the Institute of the History of Literature and Languages of the West and East at Leningrad State University.

He seriously engaged in researching the history of the Russian literary language, historical grammar, lexicology, orthoepy, the language of Russian writers, orthography, and phraseology. The main object of his scientific work is conversational Russian speech in all its manifestations.

From the late 1920s, he began working on the "Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language," edited by D.N. Ushakov. Based on this lexicographic work, S.I. Ozhegov created a one-volume "Dictionary of the Russian Language."

In the 1950s, he organized the Center for the Study of Speech Culture at the Institute of the Russian Language of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. At the same time, under his editorship and in co-authorship, famous dictionaries of pronunciation norms were published. He was the founder of the new scientific journal "Russian Speech" (the first issue was published after S.I. Ozhegov's death in 1967).

S.I. Ozhegov, together with R.I. Avanesov, edited the reference dictionary "Russian Literary Pronunciation and Stress."

Sociolinguistic research by S.I. Ozhegov served as the basis for his scientific problem "The Russian Language and Soviet Society." The monograph in 4 volumes "The Russian Language and Soviet Society: A Sociological-Linguistic Study" was published in 1968, after the scientist's death.

Editor of the "Orthographic Dictionary of the Russian Language" (1956, 5th edition, 1963), reference dictionaries "Russian Literary Pronunciation and Stress" (1955), "Correctness of Russian Speech" (1962). Founder and chief editor of the collections "Questions of Speech Culture" (1955-1965).

At the initiative of Sergey Ivanovich Ozhegov, in 1958, a Reference Service for the Russian Language was established at the Institute of the Russian Language, responding to inquiries from organizations and individuals regarding the correctness of Russian speech.

Ozhegov was a member of the Moscow City Council Commission on the Naming of Institutions and Streets in Moscow, the Subject Commission on the Russian Language of the Ministry of Education of the RSFSR, Deputy Chairman of the Academy of Sciences Commission on the Standardization of Writing and Pronunciation of Foreign Proper and Geographical Names, Scientific Consultant of the All-Russian Theater Society, and Gosteleradio; a member of the Orthographic Commission of the Academy of Sciences, which prepared the "Rules of Russian Orthography and Punctuation."

Sergey Ivanovich Ozhegov died in Moscow on December 15, 1964. His urn with ashes rests in the wall of the necropolis at Novodevichy Cemetery.