In 1863 a new Constitution of St. Petersburg Emperor University included the Department of Comparative Grammar of Indo-European Languages, to be twenty years later re-named as a Department of Comparative Linguistics and Sanscrit. After 1917 it was known as the Department of General and Comparative Linguistics, and since 1932 (with the separation of the Chair of Phonetics) has had its present name of the Department of General Linguistics. (Филологический факультет СПбГУ. Материалы к истории факультета. Сост. И.С.Лутовинова. – СПб, 2000. С. 19-22).

In successive periods of its history the Department was headed by famous linguists: I.A.Baudouin de Courtenay, L.V.Scherba, N.Ja.Marr, I.I.Meschaninov, A.A.Cholodovich, B.A.Larin, Ju.S.Maslov. Besides, such linguists as Je.D.Polivanov, L.P.Jakubinsky, V.M.Zhirmunsky, S.D.Kaznelson, A.V.Desnitskaya and others worked at the Department part-time; a mere list of the names makes for the biggest part of a university course of the history of Russian linguistics.
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In 2020, the Department was named after its many years' head Ludmila Verbitskaya (1936–2019).



Acting Head of the Department:
      PhD, Associate Professor Elena Riekhakaynen

Mailing address:
      11, Universitetskaya Embankment, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia

Main office:
      Faculty of Philology, room 184.