Résumé : The article discusses the alternative order of “language criticism” as developed by the main representatives of Russian “religious” hesychast philosophy on the one hand and phenomenological “Neo-Humboldtianism” on the other. The article draws on the works written in the early and late twenties by Aleksei Losev, Sergii Bulgakov, Pavel Florenskii and Gustav Shpet and demonstrates their substantial alterity with regard to Stalin’s philosophical ideology applied to language studies and general humanities. The main object of our study is the descriptive analysis of Russian “imiaslavie” together with Russian linguistic phenomenology debated through the perspective of European semiotics (Ferdinand de Saussure). The article strives to demonstrate the distinctiveness of these Russian intellectual traditions and their possible idiosyncrasy within the semiotic scientific paradigm.