Despite Solzhenitsyn's rather conservative political views, the award's history has been uncontroversial. This year, the prize was divided between two leading Russian philologists, Sergei Bocharov and Andrei Zaliznyak.
Bocharov has written several books on Leo Tolstoy and other key figures of Russian literature. In his acceptance speech, he stressed the importance of philology as a tool for gaining a better understanding of history.
Andrei Zaliznyak's scholarly career has spanned four decades. His first major achievement was a short addendum to his Russian-French dictionary that explained to foreigners the rules of Russian declension. Anyone who has ever studied Russian knows what a pain the elusive and illogical system of Russian declension can be. Zaliznyak was the first to squeeze this mess into a strict and logical (if rather voluminous) system; later he expanded this approach to all Russian changeable words, and his "Russian Morphological Dictionary" became a classic.
Zaliznyak has also spent several decades studying the Novgorod dialect of northwest Russia. About a millennium ago, the situation in that region was unique: Much of the population was literate, and they left lots of documents -- anything from IOUs to love letters -- on birch bark. The research into these documents has dramatically influenced scholarly views on the history of the Russian language. Zaliznyak's annual lectures on new archaeological finds in Novgorod attract crowds. Of course, his excellent public speaking skills help too.
Another one of his achievements is his 2004 volume on "The Tale of Igor's Campaign," the East Slavic 12th-century classic that many believe to be an 18th-century forgery. Zaliznyak's analysis has effectively put these views to rest. Colleagues have said that the gist of his argument is, "Nobody except me could have possibly forged 'The Tale.'"
In his acceptance speech, Zaliznyak confessed that he had long believed that any "official" recognition was worthless. Nevertheless, he stressed the importance of common sense in science and in everyday life, lamenting the situation when "a fifth-grader considers Darwin to be wrong, and the mass media present it as a serious challenge to biology."
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