Suomen kieli Suuressa neuvostotietosanakirjassa

In the Soviet context, it is usually difficult to completely separate science from politics, and Soviet linguistic writings are no exception. Thus, the articles on the Finnish language published in the three editions of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia are a good example of scientific publications that bear traces of ideology, dominant ideas and historical events that marked their respective times. The article in the first edition is permeated with the ideas of Nikolaj Marr, that dominated the discourse on language in the USSR at that time, while those are completely absent from the later articles. The second article has a more negative view of the Finnish language regarding the loanwords in its lexicon and the third article takes a more typological approach to the description of the language, reflecting the popularity of this discipline within Soviet linguistics during the second half of the 20th century.