Българските говори на територията на Съветския съюз

The history of the Bulgarian settlers (361 thousand in number) in the southern Ukraine and Moldavia during the 18th and 19th c. is briefly traced. Despite the presence of different kinds of bilingualism, a certain stability of the dialects is established on different levels of the language structure. At present several types of Bulgarian dialects exist in the USSR: Moesian, Balkan, Thracian, Eastern Rhodope, and North-West Bulgarian, all of which have preserved their characteristics fairly well. Problems of theoretical interest related to the mixture of the different dialect types are also considered. The results of the studies, devoted to a contrastive historical analysis with the dialects of the metropolis, are pointed out. They contain extremely interesting data about the trends of development of the Bulgarian dialects detached from the metropolis for a period of 150–180 years. The studies of the numerous lexical loanwords (under the conditions of active bilingualism and multilingualism, especially among the young generation) reveal very specific transformations in the semantic structure of the home lexical basic word stock. The history of the studies of the Bulgarian dialects in the USSR is outlined. The immediate aim of the forthcoming studies is the creation of a Dictionary of the Bulgarian Dialects in the USSR.