Filin, Fedot

Born Feb. 23 (Mar. 7), 1908, in the village of Selino, in what is now Dubna Raion, Tula Oblast. Soviet linguist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1962). Member of the CPSU since 1939.

Filin graduated from the Second Moscow State University in 1931. From 1964 to 1968 he was director of the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and in 1968 was named director of the academy’s Institute of the Russian Language. Filin’s principal works deal with the history of the Russian language, lexicology, and lexicography. He has done work on the ethnogeny of the Slavs, Russian dialectology and linguistic geography, and problems of general linguistics and sociolinguistics. He has also devoted attention to the development, structures, functions, and stylistic variants of literary languages, taking a comparative and historical approach. Filin was chairman of the editorial board and a compiler of the 17-volume Dictionary of the Contemporary Russian Literary Language (1950–65; Lenin Prize, 1970) and he oversaw the compilation of the Dictionary of Contemporary Russian Folk Dialects (fascs. 1–11, 1965–76; publication in progress). In 1971, Filin became editor in chief of the journal Voprosy iazykoznaniia (Problems of Linguistics).

Filin has been awarded four orders and various medals. In 1975 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Krakow (Jagiellonian University).