1863-1866 The first edition. Dal lived to see only this edition of his dictionary.
1880 The editors of the posthumous second edition (1880–1883) expanded it using the author's words cards, but, following the norms of Russian public morality, abstained from adding entries with the obscene words of the Russian
mat.
1903 In 1903, linguist
Baudouin de Courtenay insisted as editor of the third edition on including new and obscene words (in total around 20,000). Although this was criticised, this version sold well. There was a fourth edition in 1912–1914. Later these versions were censored during the
communist rule.
1935 The fifth edition (1935) was supported by
Joseph Stalin and had a high cultural significance, since it was printed in the old "spelling" (
repealed in 1918), thus providing continuity in the perception of pre-revolutionary literature by new generations. This edition was based on the second edition (1880–1883). The Baudouin de Courtenay edition was never reprinted in Soviet times.
1955 In 1955, the dictionary was reprinted in the Soviet Union again with a circulation of 100,000. This sixth edition relied also on that of 1880–1883 (i.e. without obscene words). Copies of the second edition were used as the source for the
stereotype (photographically reproduced) reprint. However, this was not an exact reproduction of an original: derivatives of the root (
zhyd,
jew) were removed from page 541 of volume 1. This ambiguous censorship stems from controversy over the use of two roots used concurrently in Russian and in many other European languages. Although Russian
жид is equivalent to , English:
jew; while corresponds to and English:
hebrew, the first form (widely used in Russian literature through the 19th century (
Lermontov,
Gogol et al.)) was later considered an expletive with a tinge of
antisemitism. To ensure "political correctness", the 1955 editors decided to remove the entire entry, keeping the original page numbers by increasing the line spacing on the censored page.
List • • • • • • ==See also==