Ferdinand de Saussure’s “Course of General Linguistics” is a work that determined the entire subsequent development of linguistics in the 20th century. Saussure's methodology - the distinction between language and speech, synchrony and diachrony, the analysis of the nature of the linguistic sign he proposed - went beyond the scope of linguistics itself, finding fruitful application in a number of humanities, from ethnology to psychoanalysis. In this edition, the translation of a number of concepts is clarified, and also for the first time The Russian translation fully reproduces the system of phonetic transcription used by the author. The publication is supplemented by the now classic commentary of the famous Italian linguist Tullio de Mauro. The book is addressed to linguists, as well as to everyone interested in general problems of the methodology of the humanities.