At the Origins of the Linguistic Expertise of the Text

The recollections are devoted to the first ‘linguistic expertise’, in which the author took part in 1962. This term was not used at that time, but the procedure resembled modern linguistic expertise. The Institute of Russian Language, which was a part of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union received a request from KGB to study the handwritten memoirs of General A. A. Brusilov, which were allegedly dictated by him and handwritten by his wife N. V. Zhelikhovskaya. These materials were found in Prague after the city was liberated by the USSR armed forces. It was necessary to compare the language and style of the manuscript with the recollections of General Brusilov published in 1946. The thing was, that the manuscript criticized Soviet Government. It was essential to find out whether these citations belonged to General Brusilov or they were added by his wife or some other person. The task required studying the diaries of Zhelikhovskaya as well. It was a challenging and laborious task, which took about a month. The scientists managed to conclude that the style of the manuscript differed significantly from the style of the published recollections. The manuscript did not contain specific words and phrases characteristic to the author.

At the end of that 1962 year the ‘Ogoniok’ magazine published an interview with the linguist S.I. Ozhegov, who told about the part which the Institute played in the rehabilitation of A. A. Brusilov.