The article is devoted to the history of conferences that take place annually at the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University, dedicated to the memory of Lev Vladimirovich Shcherba. This tradition is more than 70 years old: the first open commemorative meeting, organized by the Department of Phonetics, took place on December 26, 1946, two years after the death of its founder and leader. The program of the meeting was formed in order to summarize and highlight Shcherba’s ideas in those areas of linguistics in which he worked. Among the speakers were both famous linguists, Shcherba’s colleagues and friends, and his young students and followers. An important part of these annual meetings was the chair’s report on what had been done during the past year to perpetuate the memory of Shcherba, disseminate his ideas, and publish his works. The analysis of the invitations preserved in the archive of the Department of Phonetics, the texts of the chairs’ (M. I. Matusevich’s and L. R. Zinder’s) introductory speeches, abstracts of papers, memories of the atmosphere of these December meetings gives one an idea not only of L. V. Shcherba's personality and the breadth of his interests, but also of the ways of development of Russian linguistics during the 70 years of the postShcherbian period.