Early in 1923, when he was the president of the Moscow Linguistic Circle, Vinokur began to reflect on the culture of language. A first article, entitled “Kul’tura jazyka (“Zadači sovremennogo jazykoznanija)” [The culture of language (the tasks of contemporary linguistics)”], appeared in the journal Pečat’ i revoljucija [Press and revolution]. In this article, which sets out the main lines of the argument of his eponymous work in 1925, Vinokur relies on a careful reading of Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1916), puts forth a vision of language as a social fact and promotes the study of the “static method,” i.e. the synchronic study of language. Adopting a technical-sounding analysis popular during the post-revolutionary era, he puts forward the idea that “language is not an organism, but an organization.” Language is also open to changes from the outside, notably to rational operations of deconstructing and reconstructing the living elements that compose it.