The Slovenian language played an important role in the history of Russian-
Slovenian scholarly contact. The unique linguistic material of Slovenian attracted
the research of important nineteenth-century Russian linguists. This
article discusses in greater detail how complex issues were resolved with regard
to studying Slovenian dialects, their scholarly description and classification,
and the borders between them. It is interesting that an important contribution
to solving these issues was made by the Russian scholar Izmail Sreznevsky
and somewhat later by his student Jan Baudouin de Courtenay
