Russian sociolinguistics

[Podhomutnikov Vitaliy]

I should say dialectiology and sociolinguistics are quite alive here in Russia and every year we have at least some serious dissertations in this field. The only problem that I think we should always bear in mind is that in Soviet times we didn't have any difinite (fixed) classes (I don't mean the party elite). Of course there were differences in the society and hence in speech habits, but they were not so striking in at least urban areas. Kids from various families attended the same schools and got same education. Even if they had some "otherness" our Soviet school leveled them with others. Nowadays differences in speech are much more explicit, as well-off and poor kids get some very different education, they don't have the same opportunities and that, of course, influences the way they speak. But all in all speech discrepancies are much more significant in rural areas, as  countrymen have always lived in a "variant world". 
   In the long run all the differences that we are talking about are mostly at the level of vocabulary and in some way grammar, in photetics they are not so crucial as for example in the States or England. But that's of course my point.                       
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