The question of linguistic legacies – of both recent and more distant origin – is a central one in the present-day linguistic debates. When it comes to the handling of the Soviet linguistic heritage, in particular, one of its challenges – for today's scholars and language users alike – is that it is not always recognised as something ‘inherited’, that is, as something that stems from a particular linguistic register with specific historical and sociopolitical connotations. While certain slogans and phrases can easily be recognised as ‘Soviet’, even by younger generations of Russians, it takes a special effort of linguistic reflection – or even a philologist – to pin down the Soviet element in much of present-day Russian political and everyday talk, or to draw up a broader picture of ‘the Soviet language’. In Gasan Guseinov's terms, Soviet sociopolitical language culture may be viewed as a linguistic experience, or even competence, accumulated, developed and refined during some seventy years of Soviet rule. Accordingly, in his comprehensive dictionary of Soviet sociopolitical language, Guseinov (2003) treats the Soviet linguistic legacy from the point of view of its implications for the post-Soviet era. This is an important and necessary perspective, and one that can help us understand the role played by elements of Soviet language culture in today's linguistic and metalinguistic practices.

Soviet language culture is not only talked about; elements of this language are alive and thriving in various contemporary genres: in bureaucratic, official speech, in political speech, in sayings, in formulaic expressions, but also in linguistic humour, in satirical language, and the like. This is clearly a competence in flux, a linguistic practice which, one would expect, is decreasing among the average population, or at least changing in nature and depth. The various forms and degrees of this competence are partly the consequence of different generations, and of shifting political cultures – with their accompanying shifts in attitude towards the Soviet linguistic legacy.

This chapter focuses on the implications of the deideologisation of language after the dismantling of the Soviet Union. I will look at the transformed role of Soviet language culture in post-Soviet Russian society by way of two case studies that represent two different contexts of metalinguistic reflection, one professional, one lay: the first case study scrutinises how Russian linguists represent the Soviet linguistic legacy in post-Soviet dictionaries and monographs; the other investigates how Soviet language culture is discussed in a selection of online forums.