This article describes the activities of the Experimental Laboratory for the Study of Abbreviation Tendencies at the Russian Language Department of Donetsk State University in the period from 2016 to 2026. The author outlines the background to the laboratory’s establishment, the theoretical and practical objectives of its work, and its key achievements and results. The laboratory’s researchers have made a significant contribution to the development of the original concept of Russian abbreviation proposed by Vyacheslav Terkulov, which formed the basis for the ideas of the Donetsk derivational school. The laboratory’s research is conducted using a synchronic-equivalence approach to abbreviation, which considers the motivational (formal-equivalence) relations between abbreviations and phrases in the current state of the language and is opposed to the traditional diachronic approach, which views an abbreviation as a word-formation product resulting from the contraction of a phrase. The laboratory’s research is conducted using a synchronic-equivalence approach to abbreviation, which considers the motivational (formal-equivalence) relations between abbreviations and phrases in the current state of the language and is opposed to the traditional diachronic approach, which views an abbreviation as the product of a phrase’s contraction. The concept of Russian abbreviation outlined in the article has been put into practice through the creation of a series of new-type explanatory dictionaries of abbreviated units. The author notes the scientific recognition of the laboratory’s work on the basis of its completion of a state assignment to compile normative dictionaries of abbreviations and graphic abbreviations for the National Lexicon of the Russian Federation.