SUMMARY
In the 19th century, the emigration of Estonians gathered momentum and Estonian villages were founded on the vast territory of the Russian Empire. Having survived over several generations, these native Estonian-speaking villages can be considered linguistic enclaves outside their homeland. This article will give an overview of research expeditions into Estonian villages in Siberia and the Far East in the 1980s and 1990s. Initially, we treated the linguistic enclaves as a continuation of the map of Estonian dialects, hoping to find in the foreign-language(s) surrounded and isolated Estonian language features which, primarily as a result of the influence of standard Estonian, have disappeared from the dialects of homeland Estonia. In our further studies, we have taken into account developments in modern linguistics: whether to place emphasis on the original (authentic) or on developmental changes. In terms of language influences, we cannot forget contacts with local and regional languages.