The Italian-speaking colonies of Crimea. The point of view of a Soviet linguist

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the studies of Vladimir Šišmarev (1874- 1957), one of the major players in Romance linguistics in the Soviet Union, devoted to the Italian-speaking communities of Crimea. In the 1930s, he explored a region home to colonies founded by Italian speakers from Apulia and Ticino before the Second World War. Using the linguistic fieldwork method, the Soviet
linguist captured the unique languages of these communities, which he considered to be “language islands” within the predominantly Russian-speaking territory. His observations, some of which are kept in the archives, are unique testimonies to a bygone dialectological and sociolinguistic situation; a few years after his dialectological expeditions, the Italian speakers were imprisoned and exiled.