"Science moves not by academics alone, but by a collection of hundreds and thousands of individuals who stand outside the Academy, but are united by some force, some idea, internal and external." These words, written in 1923 by Academician V. M. Istrin, are true even now, when a book has been prepared for publication about the work of modest scientific workers who for a long time participated and are participating in the creation of an invaluable fund for the history of the Russian language - the Old Russian Dictionary Card File (KDRS). Under this name, it gained worldwide fame. Over the past twenty years, its materials have been used to develop about five hundred scientific topics, not only on the history of language, but also on ethnography, the history of mathematics, physics, geography, medicine, law, literary studies and other issues related to the past of Russia. Scientists came from 89 cities of our country and from 16 states to work with the materials of the DRS File Cabinet. And 280 people participated in its creation! Everyone - from academics to students-has contributed to this great cause. In 1925, academician A. I. Sobolevsky offered his 102,000 extracts from various Russian manuscripts of the XVI-XVII centuries (he worked with them in the archives of Moscow) to create a fund to continue the work of academicians I. I. Sreznevsky (author of Materials for the dictionary of the Old Russian language, published in three volumes in 1912) and A. Kh. Vostokov (author of the Dictionary of the Church Slavonic Language, published in two volumes in 1858-1861). In order to be able to make a dictionary of the language of Moscow Rus on the monuments of writing page 73 XV-XVII centuries - a time not yet reflected in Russian lexicography. A. I. Sobolevsky's extracts made it possible to start collecting material for compiling a dictionary of the Russian language based on sources of the XV-XVII centuries, which were also not reflected in lexicography. It was conceived on ... Read more