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This paper reviews the history of the first translation of Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de linguistique généale into a foreign language, carried out by a Moscow scholar Aleksandr Romm in 1922. The significance of this episode is considerable, as it contributes to our understanding of the reception and re-interpretation of Saussure's ideas by Russian scholars, with specific reference to their conceptualization of the book's novel linguistic terminology. Romm's engagement with Saussure's work also allows for a broader reconstruction of the debate on sociological linguistics in Soviet scholarship, viewed in its intellectual and socio-political context. In the final section, a general assessment of the evolution of Saussureanism in the Soviet linguistics of the 1920s is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]