Russian sociolinguistics

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Can anyone tell me about the state of dialectiology and sociolinguistics in
Russia? Assuming that there are differences between working-class speech and
middle-class speech in, say, Moscow (as measured in terms of a Labovian
variable-rule model), I'm wondering if anyone has done any work on such class
differences in large urban areas? That in itself would make a terrific
dissertation.

What I am even more interested in, though, was how such class differences
were viewed in what was supposedly a society dedicated to the elimination of
social class by (wherever possible) adopting proletarian values. Did the
party-line value working-class speech above middle-class speech? Or did they
rather reason that working-class speech was "bad" because workers were
exploited by the old (precommunist) system? In which case they would have
sought to teach everyone "correct" Russian (i.e., educated speech). Or
perhaps the whole idea of "good" and "bad" grammar and pronunciation is a
western-European thing? I rather doubt that, though, given the enormous
influence of French and German intellectuals on Russia in the late 19th and
early 20th centuries. I know that the Soviets were very interested in
language questions--a number of linguistic tracts were actually published
under Stalin's name.

And has anyone in Russia read Dennis Preston's work on folk linguistics?