La Révolution […], elle dévorera ses enfants Pierre Vergniaud [1793]. The paper discusses recent developments in Uralic comparative studies with the focus on linguistic taxonomy and prehistory. It is shown that during the 20th century Uralic studies underwent a drift from a traditional understanding of diachronic linguistics to an increasingly radical reinterpretation of the basic linguistic and extralinguistic facts. The perspectives opened by the new lines of thinking are in many ways fruitful and tantalizing, but in the long run a return to the conventional framework appears inevitable. Like all fields of research, Uralic comparative studies is in constant evolution. New solutions to old problems are necessitated both by fresh data and by new methodological approaches. Moreover, during some periods, the pace of evolution is extremely rapid, while during other periods only slow progress is made. In the history of Uralic comparative studies, the periods of rapid evolution have often been connected with major theoretical innovations in general scientific thinking, including the theories of general linguistics, but of equal importance has been the direct impact of a few innovative personalities. Typically, major breakthroughs have always required a critical mass of innovative scholars, who have been able to overturn established truths and create new perspectives for the whole field. On the other hand, new ideas are not necessarily always correct. While it is fruitful for the progress of science to experiment with alternative models, each new proposal has to be critically evaluated. In this process there often arises a controversy between the radical proponents of new thinking and the conservative adherents of the established paradigm.
