"De-ideoloization" of dictionary entries of religious words in traditional and modern Russian lexicography

The authors discuss the continuity or breakup with the Soviet and Post-Soviet tradition of describing pragmatically marked language signs in dictionaries. In the course of time the advantages of classical dictionaries become more and more obvious. The classical dictionaries however have drawbacks in lexicographic interpretation connected with some semasiological problems and technical difficulties of gathering and interpreting of language material. The problems arise in description of the content and structure of the pragmatic macro-component including ideological, emotive, evaluative, gender, social, political and other components. These difficulties seem to be solvable by means of modern semantic and pragmatic techniques and achievements of case linguistics. However a specialized analysis of modern explanatory dictionaries shows that some problems of classical lexicography are still unsolved. The problems remain in the inventory and logic of usage marks, selection of illustrative material and the entire structure of dictionary entries. The authors analyze the lexicographic interpretation of a pragmatically marked segment of the lexicon - the religious vocabulary. The starting point is D. N.Ushakov's Russian Explanatory Dictionary where the religious lexicon is registered thoroughly, but its interpretation is determined by the ideological context of 1935-1948. The strong and weak points of describing that «alien» lexicon in a Soviet dictionary are obvious today. It is interesting to observe how the dictionaries of 1980s -2000s were getting rid of D. N. Ushakov's ideological legacy (were they?). The pressure of censorship reduced in the last years of the USSR and disappeared in 1991. Certain relics of Soviet traditions concerning the religious vocabulary remained in our lexicography long enough. Having overcome most of the ideological stereotypes of the Soviet era, modern dictionaries try to form another picture of the world for the Russian speakers, returning to the values of Orthodox Christianity and religious tolerance as an integral part of the Russian culture. De-ideologization is replaced by re-ideologization. Thus de-ideologization of the religious vocabulary in lexicographic sources of various periods is a complicated and sometimes controversial process: not only weakening of ideological indoctrination can be observed. Strengthening and / or re-orientation of ideological and political forces may be reflected in dictionary entries of religious words.